


There's Something Wrong With Mikan Tsumiki

by RedPen



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Despair Disease (Dangan Ronpa), Gen, Remnant Mikan in all her twisted glory, fuyuhiko singlehandedly attempts to prevent two murders, slow burn on the izuru thing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:01:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23633536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedPen/pseuds/RedPen
Summary: Despair Disease hits Hajime like a bus, and Fuyuhiko finds himself left alone in the hospital with Mikan.Nobody’s dying tonight if he has anything to say about it.
Comments: 111
Kudos: 611





	1. There's Something Wrong With Hajime Hinata

**Author's Note:**

> Dealing with my frustrations about quarantine by banging out some fanfic about these kids who are also in quarantine.

There was light spilling in through the blinds of the cottage, making stripes of glaring brightness across his pillow. Hajime groaned and pulled the sheets over his head, blocking out the sunlight. The morning announcement hadn’t even gone off yet; the tropical sun had no business being so bright. Someone was hammering on the door to his cottage, but he ignored that too. Nothing short of a body being discovered was going to drag him out of bed before breakfast time.

The realization that there wouldn’t be a big communal breakfast this morning came sluggishly, along with the memories of what must have been the stupidest, most unfair motive thus far being dropped on them the day before. Hajime groaned and rolled over, burying himself deeper in the bedding as he sleepily sorted it out in his head. Crap, right. Most of them had hauled their stuff over to the sleazy looking motel on the third island. Akane, Ibuki, and Nagito were hospitalized, Mikan was staying with them, and he and Fuyuhiko, both exposed to the “Despair Disease,” had been volunteered to help her out. The hotel lobby, the restaurant, the pool, the cabins around him… they’d all be empty.

That banging on the door was really starting to give him a headache. “’s unlocked,” he grumbled into his pillow, and the knocking stopped abruptly. He lay with limbs like lead weights in his bedding as the click of the latch and the creak of hinges announced the door swinging open.

“Oh good, you’re not a body,” said Fuyuhiko’s voice irately from the doorway. “Why the hell is your door unlocked during a death game?”

“Ibuki broke the lock. Are you here to kill me?”

“Fuck, no,” said Fuyuhiko, sounding genuinely insulted at the implication. Hajime turned his head just enough to make eye contact with Fuyuhiko over the pillow, that glaring sun making him squint.

“Then it doesn’t matter, right? If this is how I die, so be it.”

“That’s a real swell fucking attitude.”

“You’re one to talk,” muttered Hajime, and regretted it immediately. “Sorry, I didn’t mean-”

“Just shut the hell up and drag your ass out of bed,” said Fuyuhiko, and if he resented Hajime for bringing up how he’d slit his stomach so recently, it didn’t show on his face. “You think just ‘cause we’re not all meeting for breakfast you can just slack off and sleep in? You’re supposed to be helping me and Mikan, you lazy bastard.”

“Sorry,” Hajime mumbled again, regretfully pulling the covers aside and pushing himself upright. He felt stiff and achey like he’d barely gotten any sleep, and it wasn’t until the strangely chill morning air hit his skin that he realized how much of a sauna his bedding had been, hot and damp with his sweat. He registered those details distractedly, suddenly far more worried about why Fuyuhiko was barging into his room. “Why are you here so early? Did something happen at the hospital last night?” His heart dropped into his stomach. “Is Nagito…?”

“Nobody’s dead,” said Fuyuhiko, snappily. “The fuck do you mean, early? The morning announcement was three hours ago! I’ve been running all over the island looking for you ‘cause you never bothered to show the fuck up at the hospital. Mikan’s freaking out, she’s convinced somebody murdered you.”

“Three hours?” said Hajime, wiping sweat from his face with the back of his arm. It wasn’t just his bedding. His shirt was also soaked with sweat, his bangs damp and plastered to his forehead. _Did I sleep through the announcement?_ No, now that he thought about it, he had a vague memory of waking to the announcement and then immediately, exhaustedly falling back asleep.

Fuyuhiko was slouching against the doorway with his hands in his pockets, watching him with an annoyed expression. “Guess I never met up with you guys in the mornings, so I didn’t know you were such a slacker. Get up, get dressed, and meet us at the hospital. And be on time from now on, I’m not your fuckin’ alarm clock.” He turned to leave and then paused in the doorway, looking over his shoulder. “That’s, uh… that’s like, friendly banter, got it?”

“Right,” said Hajime.

“I mean, I _am_ mad at you. I’m mad as shit, ‘cause I thought you went and got yourself murdered or something. But I’m not… fuck.”

“No, I get it,” said Hajime. “Friendly banter.”

“I’m trying to be better about getting along with everybody. Didn’t mean to pick a fight with you or anything. I just… how are normal people friends?”

“I think you’re getting it. You’re doing great.”

“Don’t be patronizing.”

“Right,” said Hajime again, and Fuyuhiko walked out with his face oddly flushed, leaving the door hanging open.

It took Hajime a while to drag himself the rest of the way out of bed, and even longer to peel off his sweaty clothes and change into something clean. His body felt heavy, all his movements in slow motion like he was trying to get dressed underwater. By the time he’d pulled his shoes on and left his cottage it felt like he was halfway through a marathon, hot and out of breath and already working up a sweat again. He leaned on one of the wooden support pillars just outside his door and tilted his head back to rest against it, closing his eyes and letting the cool tropical breeze blow past him. The hike to the third island suddenly seemed like a very long distance to walk.

“Hajime, what the fuck,” said Fuyuhiko, waking him once again an hour later. Hajime’s eyes opened slowly and blearily as Fuyuhiko shook him by the shoulder, kneeling down in front of him on the little wooden boardwalk that connected each cabin. Hajime was sitting upright against the pillar, one leg hanging off the edge of the boardwalk and trailing in the water below.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “Fell asleep again.”

“You fuckin’ passed out is what you did,” said Fuyuhiko, looking worried. “Dammit, don’t tell me…”

He pressed his hand against Hajime’s forehead. Hajime had the distant feeling that he should be upset about that violation of his personal space, but Fuyuhiko’s hand was cool against his skin. “Fuck,” muttered Fuyuhiko. “Not you too.”

Hajime found his eyes drifting shut again. Fuyuhiko shook him. “Hey! Hey, stay awake! You think I can carry you back to the hospital?” Disappointingly, his hand left Hajime’s forehead. “Come on, get up, you’re gonna have to walk. _Fuck!_ Why didn’t you say you weren’t feeling well when I was here the first time? No, it’s my fault, I shoulda noticed…”

“I’m just tired,” said Hajime, distantly, wrapping his arms around himself.

“You’re burning up,” said Fuyuhiko. “Of course you’re fuckin’ tired. Dammit, you weren’t like this yesterday. You musta caught it from Nagito or something.” He grimaced. “Monokuma wasn’t lying; it really is contagious. That means Mikan and I are probably next. This motive is bullshit.”

Like a slow but deadly landslide, it finally dawned on Hajime what Fuyuhiko was talking about. “I’ve… got a fever?” He sat up straight. A wave of lightheadedness rushed through him for a moment and was drowned out by a more familiar wave of panic. “No way, I’ve got the Despair Disease? I can’t have the Despair Disease!” His heart was hammering as images flashed through his head. Akane sobbing miserably, Ibuki, drool running down her chin as she saluted with that vacant stare, Nagito sprawled helplessly in bed, babbling nonsense and conspiracies. _No, no, what’s going to happen to me?!_

His usual coping mechanism - sitting down on the ground and completely dissociating from reality until the problem went away - was creeping up on him, and the world began to go white around the edges. Fuyuhiko slapped him.

“Don’t you _fucking dare_. You can panic and faint again after we get back to the hospital.”

“I wasn’t going to faint!”

“Like hell you weren’t! You think I didn’t see you faint on the beach when we first got here? Everybody saw you faint!”

“That wasn’t fainting either!” Hajime protested, rubbing at his stinging cheek. “What happened to getting along with everybody?”

“Baby steps!” Fuyuhiko shot back angrily. “It’s a fuckin’ process!”

It wasn’t the slap so much as the ridiculous argument that snapped him out of it, but Hajime did suddenly feel calmer. “Okay. Okay.” He took a deep breath. “Yeah. Hospital.”

“There you go.” Fuyuhiko patted him awkwardly on the shoulder, anger receding. “You’re just sick, it’s not the end of the world.”

“I was supposed to be helping Mikan out,” Hajime said, feeling guilty. The hospital now had one extra patient and one less caretaker. It wasn’t his fault, but it still felt like he’d failed her.

“Yeah, well, she’s still got me, if that’s worth anything. We’ll handle it. You need help standing up?”

“Should you be touching me? If you get sick too-”

“It’s a little late for that,” Fuyuhiko said with a sigh. “Guess we’ll just have to keep an eye out for it and deal with it when it happens. Don’t freak out about it right now.”

“I really hate hospitals,” Hajime admitted as Fuyuhiko helped him stand. “Visiting people is fine, but being an overnight patient gives me the creeps.”

“I’d tell you to suck it up, but I’m a nice guy now,” said Fuyuhiko.

“So?”

“So suck it up, but imagine I worded it tactfully.”

“Thanks,” said Hajime flatly.

They left the hotel area at a slow pace, Hajime leaning heavily on Fuyuhiko. The air was still too cold, but beyond the shade of the cottage’s awning the sun overhead was baking hot. More than once Hajime found himself being jostled back into consciousness by Fuyuhiko as his body sagged and his steps started lagging. The aches and pains and general fatigue weren’t any worse than a particularly bad flu, but they made hiking across the island exhausting.

“Keep going, last bridge,” said Fuyuhiko, his encouragement surprisingly gentle, and then the hospital was in sight and Mikan was rushing out to meet them, wrapping her arms around Hajime and taking his weight from Fuyuhiko. Her shrill and frantic voice dissolved into meaningless white noise, and when he opened his eyes again he was wearing a thin blue gown and lying in a hospital bed, the sheets sparse protection against over-air conditioned air.

“Thirty nine point eight,” Mikan was saying, leaning over the nightstand next to him and examining a digital thermometer. “That’s a little dangerous, I’ll have to give him something to bring it down. I’m sure all that physical activity made it worse. If he was really that sick you should have let me know, and I could have at least given him some shots in his cottage first!”

“Which end of me did that just come out of,” Hajime mumbled, because that suddenly seemed like the most pressing question.

“Don’t be vulgar,” said Fuyuhiko from the end of the bed. Hajime looked over at him slowly, his vision taking a minute to focus. Fuyuhiko was leaning with his arms crossed on the metal bedrail, watching him with concern. “Hey. Kazuichi’s been calling nonstop since you didn’t show up for the morning call. Everybody was worried about you. I let them know what happened. How’re you feeling?”

“Not great,” said Hajime. “Can I have some water?”

“Th-there’s nothing vulgar about rectal thermometers!” Mikan stammered, shoving the thermometer at Fuyuhiko. She picked up a glass of water from the bedside table and helped Hajime prop himself up in a sitting position so he could drink it. He gulped it down thirstily, her arm around his shoulders. Image slightly distorted through the bottom of the glass, Fuyuhiko held the thermometer up with a roll of his good eye and mouthed, “the top end.”

“Um, I’m going to give you a shot, Hajime,” said Mikan, setting the empty glass aside again. Her voice was still shrill and stuttering, but there was an unusual thread of confidence behind it. Mikan was in her element and knew exactly what she was doing. There was a strange comfort in that. “It… it might be a little scary, but if you’re a good, brave boy, I’ll give you some candy and a character bandage, okay?” She gave him a bright smile, and Hajime almost had to laugh at that.

“You know how old I am, right?”

“Nobody’s too old for candy and cute band-aids,” Mikan said insistently. “The hospital has a bunch with Monomi… or, I guess, Usami on them. Oh, if you don’t want candy, maybe I can find you a sticker?”

“I have enough stickers,” Hajime said coldly, his smile vanishing. “I do not want a sticker.”

Mikan busied herself preparing a syringe with whatever medication she was going to give him for the fever, and Fuyuhiko continued leaning against the end of the bed, idly fiddling with the thermometer as he watched Hajime intently.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Hajime asked.

“You’re acting way too normal. I’m waiting for you to start doing something fuckin’ bizarre,” Fuyuhiko said honestly. “That’s how Despair Disease works, right? Everybody else came down with whatever crazy symptom Monokuma thought was funny. Akane’s bawling her eyes out, Ibuki’s gullible as shit, Nagito’s talking like it’s opposite day… I wanna know what we’ve gotta deal with from you.”

“Does it matter?” said Mikan, sounding distracted. “As long as he gets plenty of bedrest and we keep the fever down…”

“It matters if it’s the ‘Stab Everybody In Their Sleep Disease’ or some shit,” said Fuyuhiko. “You’re busy with the patients, so I’m actually the only person in charge of preventing that right now.”

Mikan turned around, her eyes wide. “Nobody has symptoms like that! None of our classmates would do that!”

“Ibuki might, if somebody ordered her to,” said Fuyuhiko, as if he was stating something obvious and practical.

“No one would tell her to do _that!”_

“Just because _you_ wouldn’t doesn’t mean nobody would. Don’t forget this disease is a fuckin’ killing game motive. Every person who gets sick is another potential murderer. No offense, Hajime.”

“I’m a little offended, actually,” said Hajime. He held out his arm as Mikan motioned for it, and kept his gaze on Fuyuhiko while she sterilized a spot on his upper arm and proceeded to give him an intramuscular shot of what he guessed was acetaminophen, with no small amount of glee in her eyes. “Honestly, I don’t think I have any weird symptoms. Judging by how everybody else is acting, we’d definitely be able to tell, right?”

“That’s right, it would be obvious if you weren’t acting like yourself,” said Mikan. “I don’t know if we can say for sure, but it’s possible you just caught a normal cold by coincidence.”

“How likely is that?” Hajime asked hopefully.

“W-well, nobody’s gotten sick on the island before now, so not very,” she admitted.

“How do you feel about the idea of stabbing people in their sleep?” probed Fuyuhiko, and Mikan glared at him.

“Fuyuhiko! Go and check on the other patients, please! Hajime needs to rest!”

“Not until he answers the question.”

“Out!!” shrieked Mikan. She shoved Hajime back onto the mattress with a little more force than was strictly necessary, and slapped an Usami bandage to his arm before rushing over to shoo Fuyuhiko out of the room.

Hajime listened with only half an ear to the argument going on in the hallway. Did this hospital even have air conditioning, or was it the fever that was making the air feel so cold? He curled up into a tight little ball under the sheets. Eventually, Mikan returned and quietly closed the door. Her hand touched his forehead gently, brushing aside short, sweat-soaked bangs. 

A smooth voice, its timbre like Mikan’s and yet strangely dark and sultry, spoke in his ear.

“Izuru, are you awake?”

“Hm?” said Hajime.

“I said, Hajime, are you awake?” Mikan squeaked. “Oh, oops, I guess you are. I have to go check on everyone else. Um, especially Nagito, I really can’t leave him alone for very long. But if there’s anything else you need, I’ll get it for you before I go, alright? And Fuyuhiko and I will be checking in on you throughout the day.” When he looked up at her, her hands were clasped together, her smile tired and hesitant but encouraging.

“I’m sorry, Mikan,” Hajime muttered.

“S-sorry?”

“Sorry for giving you all this extra work. I know it’s not my fault for getting sick, but… Fuyuhiko’s right. It’s supposed to be a motive, and there’s so much stuff that could go wrong, and I was supposed to be helping you with that. So… sorry for leaving that to you and Fuyuhiko.”

“Hajime,” said Mikan, her eyes going watery. “It really isn’t your fault!”

“I know that,” said Hajime. “I just feel bad.”

“That’s because you’ve got a fever of 39.8 celsius!” said Mikan, which got him to smile again.

“You know what I mean. I still want to help with whatever I can, so if the acetaminophen kicks in and I’m able to get out of bed later, maybe I can-”

“Absolutely not!!” Mikan shouted. She softened a bit and added, “You’ve already helped out enough. This happened because you and Fuyuhiko decided to put yourselves at risk to help me and all our sick classmates! So from now on, you can help by staying in bed and getting better, alright?”

“Deal,” said Hajime.

She smiled at him, but the smile quickly faded. “Um… how did you know I gave you acetaminophen?”

“Uh, it’s also called para-acetylaminophenol, right? It’s a fever reducer. Like in Tylenol?”

“R…ight,” said Mikan, slowly. “Hajime… are you _sure_ about what you said to Fuyuhiko? About not having any other strange symptoms?”

“Yeah,” said Hajime. “But I guess if I did have some weird symptom, I might not recognize it as strange, right? So you and Fuyuhiko would probably know better than I do.”

Mikan bit her lip thoughtfully, and then leaned in and lowered her voice. “If you do notice something, please tell me, alright? Even if it’s something really embarrassing, or something you think we’d all judge you for or wouldn’t understand. You don’t have to tell Fuyuhiko, but you and I have doctor patient confidentiality, you know!” Her hand stroked his forehead again, tracing an imaginary line just under his hairline, and her eyes grew distant. “If you start remembering confusing things, I’ll help you. You can trust me with anything.”

“Yeah?” said Hajime. His eyes were drifting shut again, soothed by the motion of her hand against his hair. It was a little embarrassing, but as overheated and tired as he was, it was comforting too. “Anything?”

“Anything,” said Mikan, in that strangely sultry voice.

“Can you get me some more water before you go?”

A disappointed sigh from Mikan, and she pulled her hand away. “Yes, I can get you some water.”

________

Hajime had drifted off to sleep again, and Mikan silently closed the door to his room and turned to head towards Nagito’s. Fuyuhiko was standing directly behind her. Mikan yelped and stumbled backwards, and he quickly reached out and completely missed catching her as she tumbled with a resounding _CRASH_ into a cart of medical supplies.

“DON’T LOOK AT ME!!” Mikan wailed, while Fuyuhiko scrambled to untangle her from a plethora of plastic gloves, stethoscopes, and hospital gowns while averting his eyes as much as possible. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry for getting startled! Forgive me!!!”

“Dammit Mikan, hold still. How the hell did the scissors end up THERE?”

“They’re not scissors, they’re forceps,” said Mikan, before shrieking out another, “Ah, wait, don’t look at my forceeeeeps!!!”

“Considering what my week has been, I could not be less fuckin’ interested in looking at your forceps,” said Fuyuhiko, pulling her at last to her feet. “You okay?”

“I’m sorry! Even though you surprised me, it’s my fault! So I’m sorry!!”

“Baby steps,” Fuyuhiko grumbled to himself for some reason, before holding out the thermometer to her. “Here.”

“Oh, did you disinfect this for me?” She took it from him gratefully. “I’m sorry you went through all that trouble!”

“Yeah, and I used it. My temperature’s normal. Your turn.”

Mikan froze. “Huh?”

“If Hajime’s already sick, there’s no way you and I won’t catch it. So we might as well start checking every day. Notice it early, maybe.”

“Oh! Oh, no, that won’t work at all,” Mikan said quickly, clutching the thermometer to her chest. “The fevers come on so suddenly for everyone, I don’t think we can notice it early that way. It’s much more useful to look for strange behavior!”

“I’ve been with Hajime since he woke up this morning, and aside from being sick as hell he’s acting completely normal,” said Fuyuhiko, undeterred. “Or hell, maybe he’s got some weird symptom and it’s just something subtle we haven’t noticed. Doesn’t seem like we can count on always catching people acting weird, does it?”

“I’ll keep a close eye on him,” Mikan squeaked. “I-if he starts acting strange, I’ll be the first to know!” Fuyuhiko was giving her that same thoughtful, suspicious look he’d been giving Hajime earlier. “Um,” she said, in a sudden bout of brilliance. “Are you SURE you don’t have a fever? It’s just that you were acting really paranoid about Hajime too, so maybe, if it’s something like ‘Paranoia Disease,’ or that kind of thing…”

“Maybe I just have good instincts for bullshit,” said Fuyuhiko. “What’s your temperature, Mikan?”

Mikan’s lip began to wibble. “Why… why do you want me to waste my time with that, when our friends are so sick? I would have to disinfect the thermometer all over again, when I already have so many other things to do! Why are you being such a bully? I thought you were trying to be our friend now, but you’re not acting different at all!”

“Mikan…”

“Just… just force me, then! You can do whatever you want to me anyway, s-since I’m too weak to fight back! Just stick it in my mouth and-”

She really hadn’t expected him to take her up on that. Fuyuhiko grabbed the thermometer out of her hands and popped it into her open mouth, and Mikan made a little “MMPH!” noise of distress and spit it out. The thermometer clattered to the floor. “D-did you really sterilize that? I’ll definitely get infected now if you didn’t, and then there won’t be anyone left who knows how to take care of everyone, and Ibuki and Akane and Hajime and Nagito will diiiiiiie!!” Her voice was rising in pitch, tears streaming down her face, and she turned and fled down the hallway. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry I didn’t let you take my temperature! I’m sorry I’m so busy!! I’m sorry I fell!! I’m sorry I’m so useleeeeeess!!!”

Fuyuhiko didn’t give chase. He watched her go until she rounded the corner to the stairs and disappeared from view, and then he picked the thermometer up off the ground. The digital display was blank; it hadn’t been in her mouth long enough for an accurate reading.

After a moment, he wiped it off on his sleeve and stuck it in his own mouth again. It registered once again as 37 degrees celsius. Normal. No Paranoia Disease. So was Mikan acting weird, or was this just typical Mikan, and he really was being a bully? He silently cursed himself for avoiding the group for so long. The truth was, he simply didn’t know Mikan well enough to tell. Hell, if he’d been their friend from the start he probably would have noticed how lethargic Hajime was this morning too.

Wait, dammit. Fuyuhiko looked down at the thermometer in his hand again. If Mikan actually _was_ sick with the Despair Disease, he’d just put her spit in his mouth.


	2. Learning To Handle Your Friends When They Can't Handle Themselves

Despite the killing game, the second day of the Despair Disease motive was uneventful. Late morning rolled slowly into early afternoon, and Fuyuhiko spent most of it corralling friends who weren’t themselves. Mikan’s instructions were simple and easy to follow. Check everyone’s temperature every few hours, make sure they were drinking plenty of fluids, give them the relevant over-the-counter pills she’d collected from the pharmacy as needed. Akane was easy to keep track of. She stayed holed up, sobbing, in her room all day. Hajime slept through the morning. And Nagito’s fragile health was Mikan’s responsibility alone.

Now Ibuki? Ibuki was quickly becoming a problem.

“Shit, I lost her again,” said Fuyuhiko, rushing past the open door to Nagito’s room on his way to check upstairs. “Why the hell aren’t there locks on these doors? You know what? When I track down Ibuki, I’m finding something heavy and I’m barricading her in there.”

“That’s not safe!!” Mikan called after him frantically. “What if there’s a medical emergency, and we can’t get into the room in time?”

“She’s well enough to wander all over the place, I really doubt she’ll pull a Nagito on us overnight,” Fuyuhiko shouted from upstairs. “Oh dammit, I see her out the window, she got outside. IBUKI! HEY, IBUKI! Yes you! Don’t give me that look, get the hell back in here! through the DOOR, you stupid- Shit, she’s trying to climb up to the window, _shit!_ ”

He ran past Mikan again in a frantic dash to get outside.

“Can you please stop screaming?!” Mikan screamed after him. “You’re disturbing the patients!”

“And I’m losing my patients,” Fuyuhiko growled, dragging a grinning and vacant-eyed Ibuki back inside by the arm. “I think I’ve earned a little screaming. Ibuki, for the last time, stay in bed.”

“Understood!” said Ibuki, saluting him. “I am to stay in bed! May I ask why I cannot go outside?”

“Because you’ll die,” said Fuyuhiko, at the end of his rope. “If you go outside you’ll fuckin’ die, got it? Stay in bed and I’ll play cards with you later.”

“So my choices are cards or death! I understand!”

“Sure you do,” said Fuyuhiko, marching her to her room. “Bed.” He slammed the door to her room without checking to see if she obeyed (because of course she did, that was kind of her entire thing now), and leaned against it exhaustedly. “Well, now I gotta find some cards. How’s Nagito?”

Mikan, who’d been faithfully running a damp cloth across Nagito’s forehead since early that morning, wearily left it laying across his brow and stood up stiffly from her cheap folding chair, taking a moment to stretch her joints. She wandered out into the hallway to join Fuyuhiko, staring down at her palms with a small frown. “He’s a little more stable. That’s not saying much, but, um, I’m really doing my best!”

“I know, Mikan.”

“I’m in so far over my head,” Mikan admitted with a whimper. “I’m sorry, I know everyone’s counting on me, but I don’t think it’s just the Despair Disease. If it was because of that, everybody would be on the verge of death like Nagito, wouldn’t they? Maybe he’s got some… s-some underlying medical condition that’s making it worse? I don’t know what to do except try to manage his symptoms and hope for the best. We don’t even have the proper machines to monitor his vitals. A little island hospital like this isn’t equipped for something so serious…”

Fuyuhiko put a hand on her shoulder, trying to be comforting. She yelped and flinched slightly, and he quickly pulled it back. “Sorry.” What was that awkward crap Hajime had said to him? “You’re, ah, you’re getting it. You’re doing great.”

“My hands are chapped,” she said dismally, looking at her palms again.

“This is a hospital, we’ve probably got some kinda medicated cream for that,” said Fuyuhiko. “You said Nagito’s stable?”

“For now, but…”

“Then head up to the on call room and lie the fuck down, Mikan.”

“Ah, no one’s checked on Akane yet!”

“I’ll check on her,” said Fuyuhiko. He walked a few paces down the hall, threw open Akane’s door, and shouted in over the sobbing: “Hey, you haven’t touched that fuckin’ water I left for you? Drink it and swallow the damn pills. You’re gonna get dehydrated.”

“I’m scared!” Akane blurbled back, a picture of abject misery sprawled out like a starfish across the bed. “I’m scared I’ll choke on the pills!”

“Oh, you think you’re scared? You’re not scared. You ain’t seen scary yet, ‘cause scary’s what you’ll see if you don’t drink some goddamn fluids, Akane. Scary’s what I’m gonna do to you if you don’t bite the bullet and shove those pills down your throat. Nothin’ out there’s scarier than what you’re gonna get from _me_.”

The volume of Akane’s crying increased, but nevertheless her hand scrabbled across the bedside table and groped for the pills. Fuyuhiko watched until she gulped them down along with her water. “Hey, there you go. Good job. Real brave.”

Akane sniffled, slightly mollified, and Fuyuhiko shut the door on her again. “See? I’ve got Akane handled. Akane’s fine. Shit, compared to Ibuki, Akane’s _easy._ ”

“I’m really not sure how to feel about your bedside manner,” said Mikan.

“It’s not like I enjoy pushing them around when they already feel like crap,” Fuyuhiko muttered. “I’m just not good at anything else.”

Mikan gripped her apron earnestly. “Oh! I don’t mean to sound unappreciative! I’m really glad you’re here helping me!”

“Great. Thank me by taking a nap upstairs. I’ll check in on Hajime, and then I’ll sit with Nagito for a while. Same drill as always, I’ll come get you if there’s a problem.”

“Okay,” said Mikan, nodding vigorously. “Just for a few minutes, then.”

“Yeah,” said Fuyuhiko.

“Right,” said Mikan.

They both stood there awkwardly for a moment.

“I should go, then,” said Mikan, at the same time as Fuyuhiko said, “Hey, about this morning…”

Mikan’s hands squeezed her apron again. “Oh, don’t worry about it anymore! Please don’t even think about it at all anymore! I just got so flustered from falling, and I ended up acting all weird, and you probably hate me now…”

“If you get sick we’re screwed,” said Fuyuhiko, cutting through her babble. “You know that, right? Maybe I am paranoid, but that’s the worst case scenario for everybody. You think Nagito’d survive that?”

Mikan fidgeted and looked at the floor.

“I know it’s a lot of pressure. So, just… you should take care of yourself, too. Don’t forget to take breaks, that kind of thing. And it’d make me feel better if you checked your temperature once in a while. Just to be sure.”

He’d tried to be gentle about it, but Mikan was getting teary-eyed again. “I’m so sorry for making you worry! I’ll check my temperature while I’m taking a break, okay? I’ll check it every time I take a break! And if it’s even point one degree too high, I’ll tell you right away!! So please don’t worry. Please forgive me for making you so worried!”

Fuyuhiko raised his hands awkwardly to reassure her, unsure of how to handle her waterworks or if he should try touching her again. “Shit, hey, don’t cry, it’s fine. You don’t have to go overboard with it, just… I’m here to help. So tell me if there’s ever something up with you, understand?”

“Understood!” said Ibuki, wandering past.

“Dammit, seriously? What’d I _just_ say to you?” said Fuyuhiko, breaking away from the conversation with Mikan and hurrying after her, roughly spinning her around to walk in the other direction.

“You said, ‘Tell me if there’s ever something up with you, understand?’” Ibuki announced cheerfully.

“I’m gonna barricade your goddamn door,” said Fuyuhiko, shoving her back into her room. “I’m gonna get the fuckin’ CT scan machine, and I’m gonna drag it across the building, and I’m gonna leave it blocking your _goddamn fuckin’ door.”_

“To protect me from the outside, where I will die!” said Ibuki. “Thank you very much, Fuyuhiko!”

“Take a nap.” He slammed the door on her again, and his shoulders slumped, his voice going weary.

“Sorry, Mikan. Despite what you just saw, I swear I’ve got these guys handled-” But when he turned back to where Mikan had been standing, she was nowhere to be seen.

Fuyuhiko stared down the empty hallway for a moment. _Okay, great. She went upstairs and took a nap. That’s what I wanted her to do._

She’d been a sniveling mess a second ago. Did she really get over it that quickly and just leave?

_No, that’s still normal Mikan. She’s a sniveling mess for 99 percent of her life, so she’s probably just gotten real good at functioning around it. It’s fine._

All the same, he couldn’t stop himself from running up the stairs after her. 

When Fuyuhiko threw open the door to the on call room, a little out of breath, Mikan was exactly where she was supposed to be, lying down on the extra bed. “Did something happen to Nagito already?” she said, pushing herself partially upright and looking a little frantic. “I knew I shouldn’t be taking a break…”

“Ah… no. Everyone’s fine,” said Fuyuhiko. “Just… wanted to tell you that I’ve got it handled and everyone’s fine.”

“Okay,” said Mikan, a little unsure. She brightened up suddenly. “Oh! Before I forget!” She pulled another thermometer from her apron pocket and waved it at him teasingly. “Still 37 degrees. I checked.”

Fuyuhiko relaxed slightly. “That’s great.”

“Did you want to check yourself again?”

“No thanks,” said Fuyuhiko. “Get some rest.” He let the door close on her, feeling relieved. _See? She’s fine._

________

Mikan lay on her back atop the mattress, staring at the back of her hands as she held her palms toward the ceiling, marveling at how _young_ they were, how many familiar scars and calluses they were missing. She let them drop with a sigh.

Fishing in her apron pocket again, she found the ziplock bag of loose pills she’d squirreled away from the pharmacy last night, and counted out a handful of pain relievers, fever reducers, and various cold medications. She gagged slightly as she swallowed them dry. This much medicine was probably doing horrible things to her liver, but it wasn’t like this was her real body. She’d stuff as many pills into it as she needed to in order to appear asymptomatic. No shaking, no sweating, no stiff, creaking joints or sluggish movement. Nothing to make Fuyuhiko suspicious. There was nothing wrong with Mikan Tsumiki.

All the same, it was a little depressing that she was getting away with it. The Fuyuhiko she knew was sharp, uncompromising, ruthlessly efficient. If he’d thought she was hiding something from him, he would have tortured it out of her. She kept catching glimpses of him in the eyes of that brainwashed puppet walking around downstairs, flashing briefly to the surface with his anger. A part to her wanted to reach out and shake him, to scream in his face, _wake up, snap out of it!!_ It was creepy being trapped in this hospital with these dull-witted zombies; people with her friends’ faces but none of their personalities. It made her skin crawl every time Izuru gave her that uncanny valley of a smile.

“How cruel,” she murmured to the ceiling, running her hands roughly through her uneven bangs, feeling dull heat radiate off her skin. “How cruel, how mean, how awful. Why am I the only one awake? What’d I do to deserve it? Whatever I did, just forgive me!!”

She thrashed around for a moment with an almost silent back-of-the-throat whine of frustration and misery, her hands tangled through her hair, before relaxing slowly and going limp again.

“Or… is this a present? Did you miss me? Did you hate seeing me like that, all cowering and stupid and brainwashed? Am I… am I being forgiven for acting that way?”

The room was silent, save for Mikan’s hot, labored breathing.

“You’re watching everything, aren’t you? Should I give you a present back? Kill someone for you? Put them all out of their misery? I really, really want to, but I don’t know how someone like me can get away with it. I’m so stupid. Even when I’m not brainwashed, I’m still so useless and stupid.” She giggled. “But you know that about me, right? You know how stupid I am. If you think I can do it, I’ll figure something out. I’m so happy that you believe in me!”

The empty air did not respond. A few motes of dust drifted through the light from the window, settling on forgotten boxes and sterile medical equipment. Mikan curled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around herself, sick and feverish and alone.

“I love you,” she whispered anxiously.

No one whispered _I love you_ back. No one ever did.

________

When Fuyuhiko checked in on Hajime he was still curled up in bed, shivering, the covers wrapped around him in a tight cocoon. “Hey,” said Fuyuhiko softly. “You doing okay in here?”

Hajime shifted slightly as if roused from some shallow half-slumber. “’s freezing in here. Do we have any more blankets?”

“You’ve got two extra blankets. You’re gonna overheat if I give you any more blankets. Mikan said to cut you off.”

“I won’t tell her if you don’t.”

“Nice try.” Fuyuhiko walked over to the bed and took a rough estimate of Hajime’s temperature with the back of a hand against his forehead. “Shit, I think you’re actually getting worse. You look like you’ve lost half your body weight in sweat. Been drinking water?”

“Yeah,” said Hajime, nodding toward the empty glass on his side table.

“I’ll get you more,” said Fuyuhiko. “Probably about time for some more medicine, too.”

“Ibuprofen, this time,” Hajime reminded him sleepily. “The last dose was paracetamol, you’ve gotta alternate them.”

“The last dose was Tylenol, you delirious bastard.”

“Paracetamol, acetaminophen, Tylenol, same thing,” said Hajime, which sounded worryingly like a bunch of meaningless gibberish to Fuyuhiko. “As long as I can swallow it instead of having Mikan stick it in my arm again, I don’t care. There’s no reason not to take it orally, she just likes shots.”

“You got a cute bandaid, don’t be a wuss.”

“She still owes me candy.” He groaned and pulled his pile of blankets over his head. “This sucks.”

“Seriously, don’t start whining at me now. You’re my only cooperative patient.”

“How is everybody else?” said Hajime, peeking out of the blankets again with genuine concern, looking more awake than he’d been in a while.

“They’re fine,” said Fuyuhiko, and then more honestly, “Okay, they’re obviously not _fine_.” He pulled up a folding chair and sat down heavily next to Hajime’s bed. “Everybody’s pretty much as fucked up as the last time you saw them. Akane’s dehydrated as shit, and probably sleep deprived too because she was up all night crying. Ibuki will not stay the fuck in her room. I have no idea why; she’s gotta be exhausted from walking around so much, but she just keeps getting out of bed.”

“Nagito?”

“Still breathing. Stable right now, I guess.” Hajime relaxed a little, and Fuyuhiko gave his shoulder a small shove. “You’d know if somebody died, genius, there’d be a body discovery announcement.”

“Not if it’s only you and Mikan discovering the body. It takes three people.”

“Doesn’t matter, because nobody’s dead. We’re handling it.”

“You look exhausted,” said Hajime.

“Exhausted and handling it. Mikan would completely overwork herself if I let her, so I’ve gotta take what I can off her shoulders. And don’t you fuckin’ start with that ‘I was supposed to be helping you’ bullshit,” he added at the guilty look on Hajime’s face. “I can do it without you. Tomorrow I’ll just bring something caffeinated.”

“Caffeine stunts your growth, you know,” said Hajime, and Fuyuhiko yanked his pillow out from under him and hit him with it.

“You fucking asshole! I’m trying to have a goddamn soothing bedside manner, and you come back with that shit? You think you can get away with that just ‘cause you’re fuckin’ sick? I’ll kill you!”

“You are doing _great_ at that whole ‘getting along with people’ thing,” said Hajime, muffled beneath the pillow.

Fuyuhiko briefly imagined how easy it would be to press down on the pillow and suffocate him, before remembering that he was a good person now. Irately, he let go and allowed Hajime to slowly and stiffly rearrange it behind his head again. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Exactly two point eight degrees celsius, currently,” said Hajime, with a grin that slowly faded as he wiped sweat from his face with a shaky hand. “Sorry. It was supposed to be friendly banter. I’m not really thinking straight.”

Fuyuhiko deflated, feeling genuinely ashamed at having lost his temper at a guy confined shivering to a hospital bed. “That’s how you talk to all your actual friends, huh?”

“It usually stays relegated to my inner monologue,” Hajime admitted. He ran a hand across his brow again. “Hey, was there… was there gonna be some more water at some point?”

“Shit, sorry!” said Fuyuhiko, standing up quickly and grabbing the glass from his bedside table. “Yeah, I’ll be right back with that and the ibuprofen.”

“You know _we’re_ actual friends, right?” said Hajime as he headed for the doorway. Fuyuhiko went still, refusing to look at Hajime, his hands squeezing the glass a little too tightly.

“You don’t have to say that if you don’t mean it. I’ve done some pretty unforgivable shit.”

“And we can tell that you’re trying to make up for it. Not everybody’s gonna forgive you, but most of us are glad you’re still around.”

Fuyuhiko had no idea how to respond to that. His throat was traitorously tight, a feeling that kept creeping up on him on occasion ever since Peko’s execution. “Shut up, you delirious bastard,” he said at last, which seemed a safe fallback. “You want me to get you anything else?”

“A fourth blanket?”

“You know, maybe your fuckin’ chills wouldn’t be so bad if you weren’t cooking yourself alive under three blankets. I’m not giving you another one, it’s not gonna help. In fact, if you ask me again, I’m taking one away from you.”

“I take it back, we’re not friends,” said Hajime, burrowing back under the covers, and Fuyuhiko grinned.

“Hang in there. I’ll be right back.”

________

The door to Hajime’s hospital room opened again a few minutes later, but unfortunately for his dry throat and his pounding head, it wasn’t Fuyuhiko who came inside. Hajime lifted his head slightly to see Ibuki standing over his bed, smiling vacantly, a bundle of cloth in her arms.

“Ibuki?”

“I’ve brought you the blanket from my bed!” Ibuki said proudly. “I simply needed to bring you a blanket, correct?”

Hajime was sorely tempted to take it from her, but he shook his head. “That’s your blanket, Ibuki. I don’t want your blanket.”

“My mistake! I will bring you Akane’s blanket!”

“No, Ibuki!” He sat up a little dizzily and grabbed the back of her hospital gown as she tried to walk out. Ibuki turned around again and gave him that same empty headed smile. “Ibuki, you’re supposed to be in bed, remember? You’re not supposed to be wandering around.” That look she was giving him did not inspire confidence in Hajime that she got the idea. He doubted, if he simply told her to go back to bed, that she’d make it back by herself without getting distracted by something and wandering off again. “Just wait here, okay? Fuyuhiko’s gonna be back in a minute, and he’ll take you back to your room.”

“Understood! I need to wait here for Fuyuhiko!”

She sat down on the edge of the bed, swaying and unsteady, a thin line of drool hanging from her lips. Watching her, Hajime couldn’t help but feel he’d dodged a bullet somehow with the Despair Disease. For whatever reason he’d been spared the disease’s worst symptoms, but that could have so easily been him staring with a blank smile into the middle distance. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat next to her, still keeping those three layers of blankets wrapped around him. “Ibuki, are you even in there right now?”

“No!” she said cheerfully, starting straight ahead. “I am in ‘here’ right now, waiting for Fuyuhiko! Please tell me where ‘there’ is!”

Hajime’s hand ventured out of a gap in the blankets and patted her on the back. “Don’t worry about it.”

Another few minutes ticked by, and Fuyuhiko didn’t reappear. A few pieces of relevant data clicked together in Hajime’s head. Ibuki was in his room. Therefore, Ibuki was not in _her_ room. Fuyuhiko was checking Ibuki’s room regularly, because Ibuki liked to wander. Fuyuhiko had probably checked Ibuki’s room on the way to get Hajime some water. In Fuyuhiko’s hierarchy of priorities, “Ibuki is missing” ranked higher than “Hajime is thirsty,” and _that_ meant that his glass of water wasn’t going to make an appearance until Ibuki made it back to her room. Dammit.

“You know what, I don’t think Fuyuhiko’s coming back any time soon,” said Hajime, trying to sound cheerful. “Why don’t I walk you back? We might run into him on the way.”

For all that she seemed energetic enough to wander around, Ibuki’s steps were slow and unsteady as they walked together across the building. Hajime moved slowly as well, keeping his eyes on the floor because the hallway kept tilting disconcertingly. The ends of his thin blankets trailed on the ground behind him, and he pulled them closer, shivering again. The hospital tile was icy against his bare feet.

“I see!” said Ibuki suddenly, stopping abruptly as they passed Akane’s room. “I just need to keep Akane company, correct?”

“Hey, no, come on,” said Hajime, who really just wanted to get this over with and go lie down again. “You need to go back to your room.”

“Understood!” said Ibuki. “I will keep Akane company in my room!”

She made a 90 degree turn and wandered straight into Akane’s room, and Hajime groaned and followed her. “Ibuki!”

Ibuki was standing in the middle of Akane’s room, motionless except for that unsteady back-and-forth sway. Apparently she considered _that_ keeping Akane company, but it was doing nothing to reassure the sobbing mess sprawled out facedown across Akane’s bed.

“Everybody forgot about me,” Akane whined softly into her pillow. “I’m all alone in the hospital and everyone forgot and no one’s ever gonna come to visit me and I’m looooooonely! Why isn’t anybody coming to visit me? I don’t wanna be in the hospital! I want my friends! I want Coach Nekomaru!”

There was no morally justifiable way to just return to his bed now, and Ibuki didn’t seem to be going anywhere, so with a defeated sigh Hajime abandoned one crisis for another. He _had_ kept saying he wanted to help, he couldn’t complain about it now. Pushing through the pain of his aching joints, he knelt down next to Akane’s hospital bed. “Akane? Ibuki and I came to visit you.”

Akane raised her head from her pillow and looked at him with a face screwed up in misery, covered in sweat and tears and snot, her skin flushed with fever and her hair a tangled mess. Without warning, she made a little jumping lurch across the bed, wrapping her arms around Hajime and burying her face in his shoulder. Her skin was a furnace against his, the only thing in the world that didn’t feel like it had been chiseled from ice.

“I thought everybody forgot,” she cried into his shoulder.

“Nobody forgot about you,” said Hajime. He rearranged his blankets a bit so that he could reach up to rub her back, making small circles between her shoulder blades. “Everybody’s really worried about you, but they can’t visit because you’re sick, remember?” She nodded slightly, her hair brushing the side of his face.

“I’m so scared. I don’t know why I’m so scared. I’m not supposed to be scared of anything, but I’m scared to be in the hospital by myself.”

“Nobody thinks less of you,” said Hajime, glancing back at Ibuki to be sure she was staying put. She should probably at least be sitting down, but she seemed content to be standing ramrod straight in the middle of the floor. It didn’t seem like a battle worth fighting with her. He went back to consoling Akane. “I think it’s normal to be scared right now. I’m a little scared of hospitals too, you know?”

“Y-yeah?” Akane sniffled against his shoulder.

“Yeah. I had to have surgery once. It was…” He trailed off, eyes going a little unfocused as he reached for the memory and found it walled off behind the staticy void of whatever part of his brain housed his missing talent. He hated that feeling, hated every time he accidentally triggered it by thinking too far in the wrong direction. “It was scary,” he finished unconvincingly, pretty sure of that, at least. “But you’re here so you can get better.”

“I wanna get better,” Akane whimpered. “My face hurts from crying so much. I hate this.”

“No kidding,” said Hajime, still rubbing her back. “Hey, remember the last time we were hanging out together, and you started telling me about your family? Your seven brothers and sisters?”

“Yeah,” said Akane faintly, a little bit of a smile in her voice. “All those little guys. If they saw me flippin’ out like this, they wouldn’t believe it.”

“Keep telling me that story,” said Hajime. “How’d your family react when you started doing gymnastics? Were your siblings excited?”

“Ha! They were seriously stoked when they found out. They wanted to be just like me, so they all started tryin’ to balance on top of furniture and crap…”

He kept her talking, feeling the tense muscles of her arms slowly relax around him as she calmed down and her breathing became even. Before long, Akane’s confusing, stream-of-consciousness story about her family trailed off mid-sentence. Her head rested on Hajime’s shoulder, her breathing slow and deep, her eyes closed.

He was calculating how exactly to shift her upper body back onto her bed with minimal jostling - if he woke her it would definitely trigger another crying fit - when someone spoke up behind him.

“What, are we having a sick party? Why wasn’t Nagito invited?”

Fuyuhiko was standing in the doorway, the look on his face torn between fury and relief. The dusty red soil of the third island was all over his shoes. _He couldn’t find Ibuki in the hospital,_ Hajime realized. _He was just in my room before she disappeared, so he didn’t think to check there. He probably thought she wandered outside._

“Everybody’s okay,” said Hajime quickly. Fuyuhiko stepped around Ibuki and helped him move Akane, prying her arms away from Hajime with very little concern for being gentle about it. He needn’t have worried about waking her up. Akane was snoring like a foghorn at this point, dead to the world. “Ibuki just wandered into my room, and one thing led to another.”

“Don’t word it like that, you make it sound like I walked in on you having sex with her,” Fuyuhiko said with disgust.

“She’s been overhearing things in other rooms,” said Hajime. The thought hadn’t occurred to him until this exact moment, but he knew as soon as he said it that it was absolutely correct. “That’s why she keeps wandering around. She’s the Ultimate Musician, so her ears are really sensitive, and it’s not like the hospital rooms are all that soundproof. She overheard you and me talking about the blanket, so she brought me one, and she heard Akane crying about being lonely, so she came in here. She’s probably been hearing everybody’s conversations and thinking they’re orders for her.”

Fuyuhiko stared at him, wide-eyed. Akane, still hanging limply from his arms, gave a particularly loud snort.

“What?” said Hajime.

“No shit,” said Fuyuhiko, dumping her unceremoniously onto the bed. “No shit, that actually makes a whole lot of sense! She wandered out when I was telling Mikan to take a break upstairs, too! How the fuck did you figure that out?”

Hajime shrugged. “Just seemed obvious. Do you think we could move Ibuki’s bed into Akane’s room? It’d keep Akane calmer, and there’d be someone there to keep an eye on Ibuki and stop her from walking around.”

“Hajime, why the hell did you have to get sick? You could’ve been so fuckin’ on top of things.”

“Speaking of that, I would _really_ like that water right about now,” Hajime murmured, leaning his head back against Akane’s mattress. “I’ve kind of incredibly overextended myself.”

“Nobody asked you to go roaming around the hospital with Ibuki. We’ve actually been repeatedly telling you not to do that.”

“So much for being your most cooperative patient,” said Hajime, closing his eyes and putting a hand to his temple. “Ugh. I’m experiencing presyncope.”

“You’re _what?_ ”

“I’m dizzy. Lightheaded. Probably dehydrated from all the febrile sweating.”

Fuyuhiko was silent for a moment. “O….kay,” he said slowly. “Okay, we’ll get some water and some meds in you in a second. Just… hold on. I need to check something.”

Hajime opened his eyes reluctantly as Fuyuhiko jostled him, kneeling down beside him next to Akane’s bed and holding something up to his face. “Hajime, what’s this?”

As the room tilted around him, he focused his eyes on the bizarre looking piece of equipment in Fuyuhiko’s hand, snatched at random off a shelf. “That’s a C512 medical tuning fork. It’s for hearing exams.”

“Shit, really?” said Fuyuhiko, looking it over. “I thought it was a weird hammer. What about, uh… this one?”

“That one’s a hammer,” said Hajime flatly.

“Okay, this one?”

“That’s a hemostatic clamp; it’s used to reduce bleeding during surgical procedures.”

Fuyuhiko sat back on his heels looking thoughtful, his hands still full of random medical tools. “Okay, one more question, and think _really hard_ about this. Did you know any of that _yesterday?_ ”

“Yeah,” said Hajime. “Why wouldn’t I? I’m the Ultimate Nurse; that’s my talent.”

“Okay,” said Fuyuhiko, processing that. “Okay. I think we just found your Despair Disease symptom.”

“What are you talking about?” said Hajime, baffled. “We agreed earlier that I don’t have any weird symptoms. I’ve always had this talent. That’s why it’s so frustrating that I’m too sick to help everyone.”

Fuyuhiko transferred all his medical tools to one hand and put the other on Hajime’s shoulder, firmly, a strangely pitying expression on his face. “Yeah, of course. That’s your talent.”

“What’s with that look?”

“Nothing, just… we should get you back to your room. You’re way overdue on that ibuprofen.” Something in Fuyuhiko’s demeanor had changed. They’d been trading barbs back and forth earlier, starting to act like real friends, but suddenly Fuyuhiko’s tone of voice was softer, talking to Hajime with the same fake note of cheerful reassurance that everybody kept using with Ibuki and Akane. His hand rubbed Hajime’s shoulder encouragingly through the blankets. “Hajime, you… you’re gonna be okay, got it? You’re gonna be okay.”

“Why are you-” Hajime began, and was cut off as a scream rang through the hallway outside. It was the kind of high-pitched, bloodcurdling shriek that typically accompanied either a body discovery or Mikan being mildly startled.

“Why is there DIRT all over the HALLWAY? We have slippers! You’re supposed to change into slippers when you come inside! _This is a hospital!!_ ”

“Shit,” said Fuyuhiko, looking down at his shoes. The door swung open and Mikan stuck her head into the room, vibrating with a frantic, righteous fury.

“Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu, what are you _doing?_ Why is everyone out of bed? I thought you said you had things handled!” She threw her arms into the air in exasperated indignation. “Why has absolutely NO ONE been watching Nagito?!”

Fuyuhiko scrambled to his feet, dropping his handful of surgical tools. “Shit, Mikan, is he-”

“He’s fine, but he might not have been!” Mikan rushed in, tapping Ibuki lightly on the shoulder as she passed her, her voice changing instantly to a gentle murmur. “Oh, Ibuki, please go and lie down in bed. It would be terrible if you made your condition worse by wearing yourself out!” She knelt down in front of Hajime and touched a warm hand to his face, and he found himself shrinking away from her until Akane’s bedframe was digging sharply into his back.

“Uh, Mikan, you don’t have to get that close…”

“Hajime, you poor thing, your chills are getting worse, aren’t they? Hasn’t Fuyuhiko been taking care of you at all?” She fixed Fuyuhiko with an icy glare, unleashing the full displeasure of the Ultimate Nurse on him for a moment before turning back to Hajime with a bright smile. “Why don’t I draw you a lukewarm bath and sponge you down all over? Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“That’s… really not necessary!” said Hajime, choking slightly on his own spit. Fuyuhiko turned his head away and coughed into the crook of his arm, sounding suspiciously as though he was trying to hide laughter. Hajime shot him a look of utter betrayal.

Luckily for Hajime’s dignity, Mikan became distracted a moment later with a flustered, “Ah, Ibuki, that’s not what I meant!” as Ibuki obediently traipsed past her and collapsed facedown on Akane’s bed. Akane continued to snore beneath her, completely unperturbed by the sudden extra weight. 

“Get me out of here,” Hajime hissed to Fuyuhiko as Mikan tried apologetically to disentangle them.

“Sure you don’t want a sponge bath?” Fuyuhiko whispered back, grinning.

“I don’t know, do you think Mikan’s mad enough at you, or do you want me to tell her how late you are on giving me that dose of ibuprofen?”

“You know what, yeah, let’s go,” said Fuyuhiko. The two of them sneaked out of the room.


	3. A Promise You Can’t Keep Is Basically Just A Lie

The sun had finally set on Jabberwock Island, and the hospital was dark. As he shouldered open the door to Nagito’s room, a covered tray in his hands, Fuyuhiko briefly considered flipping the lights on, before deciding that Mikan had probably left them off to avoid disturbing Nagito’s sleep. "Hey, Mikan. Dinner.”

Mikan didn’t respond. She was seated in one the the folding chairs they’d appropriated from the conference room upstairs, hunched over Nagito’s bed. As in the other rooms, Mikan had dragged the room’s dresser over next to the bed to serve as a bedside table, and the top of it was cluttered with syringes and pill bottles. Fuyuhiko carefully nudged them aside with the tray as he set it down. Mikan still didn’t seem to notice him, her eyes transfixed by Nagito’s slow, ragged breathing. She was muttering under her breath. After a moment’s hesitation, Fuyuhiko touched her shoulder. “Mikan?”

She screamed and jerked away from him, falling out of her chair with a crash and taking half of Nagito’s bedding with her on the way down. By the time her back hit the ground she’d somehow gotten completely twisted up in the sheets, in a position that resembled some kind of soft core rope bondage. “AH! N-no! Don’t loooooook!!”

“It’s too dark in here for me to see shit anyway, just hold still,” Fuyuhiko sighed, no longer shocked by this. Between the two of them they got her untangled, and Fuyuhiko tossed the wrinkled sheet back over Nagito while Mikan got to her feet and smoothed down her apron, her face so bright red it almost seemed to be glowing in the dim room.

“S-sorry! Um. I mean, I’m sorry I didn’t hear you come in. I’ve been working so hard and I think I was zoning out a little bit…”

“Are you gonna be okay by yourself tonight?” Fuyuhiko asked her bluntly. “Nighttime announcement’s coming up in an hour. You’re probably not gonna have a chance to sleep. Can you deal with that?”

“I’ll be fine!”

“You’ve already pulled one all-nighter,” said Fuyuhiko. “We can’t keep doing it this way forever.”

Mikan bit her lip. “We don’t really have a choice, right? According to Monokuma’s rules, only one of us is allowed to stay in the hospital overnight. Maybe… maybe someone else could stay instead, but if there’s an emergency, I’m really the only one who knows what to do. If one of our friends died because I wasn’t here…” She trailed off as she sat back down in her folding chair, reaching out to gently squeeze Nagito’s slack hand. “I can’t let that happen. The poor things, they’re so helpless.”

Nagito, to Fuyuhiko’s surprise, reacted to her touch. His hand twitched as if trying to pull away from hers, and he mouthed something incoherent which came out as nothing more than a raspy breath.

“Shit, is he awake?” said Fuyuhiko.

“Oh no, all that thrashing around must have disturbed him!” said Mikan. She rushed to arrange the sheets more neatly, and Nagito tensed as she tucked them in around him. “He’s been in and out all evening, which I think means he’s getting better. He’s even been talking a little, but, um… it wasn’t really anything that made sense.”

“Well yeah, it wouldn’t be,” said Fuyuhiko.

Nagito’s eyelids fluttered as if he was trying to open them, and he mouthed something again. “Shhhh. Please rest,” Mikan murmured soothingly, and Nagito seemed to slowly settle back into unconsciousness. She looked back to Fuyuhiko. “I’m sorry, what was it you came in here for, again?”

“Brought you some dinner,” Fuyuhiko repeated, pointing to the tray still sitting on Nagito’s bedside table. The cloth covering everything was one of Hotel Mirai’s complementary beach towels, and Mikan examined it curiously.

“Oh! Um, thank you. You can just leave it there on the table, I’ll eat it in a bit.”

“Have you eaten _anything_ today?” said Fuyuhiko, sitting down on Nagito’s bed. Mikan wrung her hands nervously, as if worried he’d wake Nagito again. “If I just leave it there, can you promise me you not just gonna go back to nursing him, and forget it’s there, and just not fuckin’ eat it?”

Mikan looked down guiltily at her lap. “When did you become so responsible, Fuyuhiko?”

 _I’ve always been responsible,_ Fuyuhiko thought. _It’s a facet of my talent, I’ve just been forcibly repressing it since we got here to prove a stupid fuckin’ point that didn’t matter and got a bunch of people killed._ He swallowed forcefully before his throat had a chance to go tight on him again and grabbed the tray, setting it down with a little too much force in Mikan’s lap. “Just take one bite in front of me, and then I promise I’ll stop hovering like your goddamn nanny.”

She actually giggled at that, a weak little sound, before pulling the towel off and poking dubiously at the food: a bowl of soup and a package of some unidentifiable off-brand junk food from the supermarket that Fuyuhiko figured _probably_ had some kind of nutritional value because there was a picture of fruit on it. “It looks… um… is this cup ramen? Did you maybe, um… n-not to sound ungrateful, but did you just heat up a bunch of instant cup ramen and pour it into bowls?”

“Don’t bitch at me about it,” Fuyuhiko grumbled defensively, crossing his arms, while Mikan opened the package with the fruit picture and dumped out a handful of gummies. Fuyuhiko’s throat tightened further, and he looked away into some dark corner of the room. _Shit, I just grabbed something at random, why’d it have to be that? Shoulda paid attention._ “I’ve never cooked before,” he said. “I just looked around the supermarket for shit that looked hard to fuck up.”

“I see,” said Mikan, staring down at the tray with an unreadable expression. “It’s just _so much sodium._ ”

“You get that it’s a whole _event_ even grabbing food from the supermarket right now,” Fuyuhiko added. “We’re quarantined, we can’t afford to mingle with our healthy classmates. I had to spend ten minutes shoutin’ across the fuckin’ motel parking lot to coordinate with everybody; make sure nobody was gonna be in the supermarket at the same time I was. I think Sonia’s in there right now in a mask and rubber gloves, disinfecting the place behind me. Then I had to heat this shit up at the hotel and walk it across two islands. I did that for five meals, and yet apparently nobody in this fuckin’ hospital has a fuckin’ appetite.”

“I really didn’t mean to sound ungrateful!” Mikan squeaked. “I’m sorry for not thinking about all the trouble you went to! I’m so sorry!!” She took a deliberate bite of the ramen and made an unconvincing and over-the-top “mmmm!” sound of pleasure.

“Knock it the fuck off, Mikan.”

“Alright, it’s bad,” Mikan admitted. “It’s really bad. It’s gone all cold and congealed by now. Sorry. B-but I’m sure everyone would have eaten it anyway, if they weren’t sick! They probably just don’t have any appetite because of the fever!” She set the tray back on the bedside table with poorly hidden distaste. “When did you have the time to do all this?”

Fuyuhiko leaned back slightly against the footboard of the bed and folded his arms. “My workload’s been cut in half ever since we moved the girls in together for their little quarantine slumber party. Akane’s calm and Ibuki’s staying put; Hajime nailed that shit.”

Mikan frowned. “Oh, that’s right. Um, are we certain that’s a good idea? Putting them in the same room like that might keep Akane and Ibuki from getting the amount of rest that they need.”

“It’s a whole lot more fuckin’ restful for me,” said Fuyuhiko.

“You know, just because Hajime _thinks_ he’s a nurse right now doesn’t mean he actually knows what he’s talking about,” Mikan said sharply. It was hard to read the nuances of her expression in the darkness, but to Fuyuhiko she almost looked disappointed. “Talent Disease. Why _that?”_

“Don’t know what the fuck you were expecting, but it makes sense to me,” said Fuyuhiko. “Look, it's obvious the guy’s got some kind of anxiety thing, right? He’s had amnesia about his talent since day one, probably ‘cause he’s overthinking it. We all know it’s _something_ social. Ultimate Counselor or somethin’.”

“Ultimate Counselor,” Mikan echoed blankly, as if she couldn’t wrap her head around it.

“Well, it’s not like he ever talks about it, but you can tell it bothers the crap out of him. I can’t even imagine what it’s like, to not know who you are like that. So his Despair Disease being something talent related? I get that. He’s probably just mimicking yours ‘cause he’s desperate to be useful right now, and we need an Ultimate Nurse.” Fuyuhiko sighed and picked at Nagito’s sheets. “I really shoulda caught on sooner. He was talking pretty much like normal, so I just… I wasn’t thinking about how sick he was. But he’s just as delusional as the rest of them. He’s not himself either.”

“Ah, well, they’ll probably all go back to normal when the motive ends!” Mikan said, trying to sound cheerful. “We’ve never really had a motive end before somebody died, but since it’s a disease, maybe if we wait long enough it’ll run its course and go away on its own?”

“Yeah? And how long is that gonna take?”

“Anywhere from a few days to, um, never,” Mikan said, fidgeting.

That terrible tightness welled up in his throat again, hot and miserable, and Fuyuhiko drew his knees up to his chest and buried his face in them, suddenly not wanting to look at her or her tray of _stupid fuckin’ gummies_. “Fuck this motive.”

They sat in silence for a while.

“It was a good idea to get food for everyone,” said Mikan, eventually. “They need to keep their strength up if they’re going to get better, so even if they don’t have any appetites, everyone should at least try to eat a little.” The rhythm of Nagito’s breathing staggered slightly, and when Fuyuhiko looked up she had a hand on Nagito’s cheek, peering into Nagito’s half-lidded eyes as if checking to see if he was conscious. Nagito’s body had gone rigid again at her touch. “Um, if you sit with Nagito for a while, maybe I can go down to the supermarket before the nighttime announcement and find something a little easier for everyone to digest?”

Wearily, Fuyuhiko rubbed at the spot where his eye used to be. “Sure,” he said. “Sounds like something I can’t screw up.”

Mikan smiled weakly at him. “I’ll make it easier on you, and give Nagito something to help him sleep.”

Her hand groped at the bedside table for a moment, and then her smile slowly turned to a frown as she turned to check it more thoroughly, lifting the tray Fuyuhiko had brought to search underneath it. “Where are all my syringes? I can’t have gone through them all already…”

Knowing how shot-happy Mikan tended to be, Fuyuhiko highly suspected that she’d gone through them all already. “Is there… I dunno, a fuckin’ pill he can swallow instead?” he asked, out of sympathy for Nagito’s poor pincushioned arms.

Mikan gave a regretful little huff of breath. “If it’s the only option…”

Fuyuhiko looked away while she went through whatever motions were required to make the barely conscious Nagito open his mouth so she could place a few pills at the back of his tongue. He’d invaded enough people’s dignity today. He looked back as she was tipping a sip of water between Nagito’s lips, watching for him to swallow. “There we go. He shouldn’t give you any trouble now.”

“Thanks, Mikan.”

“And when I get back, um, we should probably talk about breaking up the quarantine slumber party.”

“One thing at a time,” Fuyuhiko said tiredly as she excused herself from the room.

He transferred himself to her folding chair. The metal was still warm with her body heat. Maybe a little too warm - they should both check their temperatures again. Fuyuhiko idly searched the bedside table for a thermometer and didn’t find one, though he did take the time to throw the towel back over Mikan’s tray. He leaned back again and stared at the slow rise and fall of Nagito’s chest, waiting for her to return. “Fuck, I probably should have asked her what I’m supposed to do if you stop breathi-”

Nagito sat up and grabbed him by the collar.

“FUCK!!” said Fuyuhiko, automatically throwing his body backwards. The chair crashed to the floor once again, this time leaving Fuyuhiko sprawled across the tile with Nagito’s weight on top of him. He could feel the unnatural, furnace-like heat of Nagito’s body, even through the twisted sheet that was pinned between them. Nagito was breathing heavily, his hot breath on Fuyuhiko’s face. One of the hands at Fuyuhiko’s throat was tightly clutching a handful of syringes, grinding them together until the glass started to splinter and sedative leaked between his fingers. As he opened his mouth to speak, two pills hit Fuyuhiko’s cheek, along with a thin line of spit.

“Where’s Hajime? What did she do to Hajime?!”

“Get the _fuck_ off me!” said Fuyuhiko, pinned to the floor. Nagito might have been a scrawny, muscleless beanpole, but the recent wound in Fuyuhiko’s stomach had taken a lot out of him. He scrabbled at the hands gripping his shirt, trying to pry Nagito’s fingers apart, unsure if he was more worried about Nagito stabbing him with the syringes or slicing his own hand open on the broken glass. “Let go, bastard! I said let go!!” He managed to get all of Mikan’s syringes - and the missing thermometer - out of Nagito’s grasp, and in one frantic motion he tossed them across the room out of Nagito’s reach. “Were those on the table? Did you steal those when she was tangled up on the floor earlier?!”

“I want to sleep!” A frantic, delirious giggle escaped Nagito, his eyes far, far too bright. “She doesn’t want me to sleep so she refuses to drug me but I want to sleep!! Don’t tell Mikan that I was asleep!” He closed those feverish eyes, hyperventilating for a moment. “Hah… nnn… I want to say it! L-listen to me, I want to say it, I’m saying it on purpose…”

Summoning all his strength and grimacing against the pain in his stomach, Fuyuhiko managed to roll Nagito off of him. The taller boy’s body was dead weight, flopping to the floor and staying where it lay as Fuyuhiko sat up.

“The… the traitor… the traitor isn’t human,” Nagito panted desperately against the floor, losing some internal battle. “One of us is actually a robot! Why do you think they call him Gundham, ahahaha! I’ve figured it all out!”

“Alright, yeah, sure,” said Fuyuhiko, also breathing heavily. He wiped Nagito’s drool and the half-dissolved pills off his face with the back of his sleeve. “Fuck, okay, Mikan’s gonna tear into me again if she gets back and finds you on the floor.” Nagito’s hand, hot and slick with sweat, reached out and clawed frantically for Fuyuhiko’s.

“Where’s Hajime? I don’t care where he is. I don’t want to talk to Hajime.”

“He’s sick,” said Fuyuhiko, as patiently as he could manage. “He’s here at the hospital, ‘cause he caught what you have. Here, let go of my hand, lemme just get my arms under your shoulders…”

“It’s not my fault,” Nagito rasped as Fuyuhiko dragged his body slowly and laboriously back into bed.

“No, it’s not. Fuckin’ _stay there_.”

Nagito took his advice and did not try to lurch out of bed again. He lay limply, staring at the ceiling, his eyes unfocused. Fuyuhiko stood over him, unsure of what to do next. Nagito had been such a force of malice and chaos in the trials, but at this moment he just looked like a sick, scared teenager.

“It’s safe in the hospital,” Nagito said faintly.

“Yeah, it’s safe. You’re safe.”

Nagito shook his head violently, wispy white hair sticking with sweat to his forehead. “ _Yes._ It’s _safe._ ”

Fuyuhiko grabbed his shoulders to keep him still. “Okay! Okay, fuck, I’m not an idiot! You’ve got the Liar Disease, right? So you’re saying you don’t feel safe?”

“I can talk,” Nagito rasped, his shoulders tense and shaking under Fuyuhiko’s grip. “It’s so easy to communicate. I can talk to people, and they’ll understand, so I feel safe.”

Fuyuhiko let go of him slowly. Nagito didn’t continue to thrash, so he took a moment to right the folding chair and sit down. “You… fuck, slow down if you’re gonna make me translate this crap. You can’t even talk, right? You’re scared because you can’t even tell anyone what’s wrong with you? No, don’t say anything, just nod or shake your head.”

Nagito nodded, relaxing a little.

“Was that a yes?”

“No,” said Nagito, nodding again.

“Okay, good. You nodded yes, and you meant yes. You can still communicate with body language, so you’re not completely helpless, got it? Just calm down and fall back on that if you need to.”

“I’m calm. It’s safe in the hospital. Tell Mikan I’m awake. Please tell Mikan everything I’m saying. _Please._ ”

“Don’t tell Mikan?”

A nod.

Fuyuhiko steepled his fingers and gazed at Nagito over them. “Alright, I won’t say anything to Mikan. Tell me, in _short, simple sentences,_ why you don’t feel safe around her.”

“Her eyes,” Nagito panted. “Her eyes are so full of hope. When she takes care of me, she has a look in her eyes like she’d never hurt me. She’s not going to kill me.”

“Well fuck,” said Fuyuhiko.

It might just be delirium - Nagito hallucinating a look in Mikan’s eyes that wasn’t really there - or maybe it was a more justified paranoia. Nagito had been trying to convince the entire island to kill him for days now, so maybe now that he was bedridden and unable to defend himself, he was expecting the worst.

Or maybe Fuyuhiko _wasn’t_ being a paranoid, suspicious bastard, and it really was weird as hell that Mikan had refused to let him take her temperature.

“Mikan doesn’t want to kill you,” he reassured Nagito, because there was a look of panic creeping over him. “Look at me. I’m not just ignoring what you’re saying. That’s a serious accusation and I’m taking it pretty goddamn seriously, so you need to _trust me_ when I say that Mikan doesn’t want you dead. She’s actually so obsessed with keeping you alive right now that she’s forgetting to eat and sleep. Does that sound like somebody who wants to murder you?”

Nagito shook his head, looking frustrated. “She’s never alone with me, it’s too easy to get away with! Nobody would know it was her! She’s already thought of the perfect plan, so there’s no need to wait! The killing game-”

“Slow down!” Fuyuhiko repeated, feeling like they were struggling their way through a language barrier. “Slow the fuck down, Nagito! She’s… Mikan’s alone with you all the time, so if you turned up dead it’d be obvious she did it?” Nod. “You think she’s biding her time, coming up with a plan?” Nod.

“Okay,” said Fuyuhiko. “And this isn’t me not believing you, but I gotta ask. Is this something you’re legitimately scared of, or are you losing it and spouting more Despair Disease bullshit like ‘Gundham’s a robot’ at me right now?”

Nagito was shaking his head adamantly before Fuyuhiko had even finished the sentence. “Yes. Bullshit. It’s just bullshit, yes. _Yes_.”

Fuyuhiko leaned back heavily in his chair. Nagito, sprawled helpless and immobile in bed, watched him with wide eyes, still panting far too quickly. He looked terrified, and the expression didn’t at all fit his face.

“Why the fuck are you warning me?” said Fuyuhiko, tiredly. “You haven’t shut up about how much you want to die since we got here.” Nagito’s mouth opened to answer, but it just hung there slackly, unable to find the right short, simple sentences to make the complex idea in his head understood. Fuyuhiko shook his head and brushed it off. “No, forget it. You’ve got Despair Disease, you’re not yourself, I’ll leave it at that. Shouldn’t be telling you off for finally deciding to live; we need a hell of a lot more of that around here.”

“It’s safe in the hospital,” Nagito repeated.

His hand was groping blindly for Fuyuhiko’s again, and against his better judgement Fuyuhiko reached over and took it. “Fuck, Nagito, okay. I understand what you’re saying, you hear me? You have made yourself understood. I’m not gonna let Mikan kill you.”

Nagito squeezed his hand. “Keep. Hajime. In the hospital. Everyone. Has to stay. In the hospital.”

“Hey, breathe,” said Fuyuhiko. “Nobody’s gonna die. Not Hajime, not you. When you’re in this hospital you’re under my protection, and that’s a promise.”

“Your talent is so disgusting,” Nagito whispered.

“Save that shit for Hajime.”

________

He was supposed to be supervising Nagito until Mikan returned with the food, but Fuyuhiko found himself incapable of staying in that stifling room. There was always a moment of downtime required after taking to Nagito, and he spent it in the dimly lit hospital hallway, leaning against the wall and waiting for the world to realign itself into something that made sense. He’d already washed and disinfected the thermometer and tossed the broken syringes into one of the hospital’s medical waste bins, and in the room behind him, Nagito was breathing evenly in a shallow, un-drugged sleep.

The nighttime announcement would go off in about twenty minutes, but Fuyuhiko wasn’t sure how long he had before Mikan came back. He wasn’t even sure if he should be panicking about Mikan coming back. Nagito was struggling for breath and burning with fever, and Despair Disease had scrambled his brains more than the rest of them combined. For all Fuyuhiko knew, everything he was babbling about could be some fever dream he’d confused with reality, so what the hell was he supposed to do with this information?

 _What would I do with this information if I one hundred percent, unequivocally believed it?_ Fuyuhiko thought, and the answer to that was obvious. Ensure his classmates were safe. Make sure nobody panics. Was this how Byakuya had felt when Nagito’s fake murder threat had tipped him off?

 _Hell, it’s Nagito. I might be falling for the exact same shit right now, and I’ve still got no choice but to take it seriously. Dammit!_ He clenched his teeth and balled his hands into fists. The thermometer he’d disinfected pressed into his left palm. Fuyuhiko uncurled his hand slowly and looked down at it.

_No, it’s not just because Nagito said something. I’ve had a hunch about Mikan since the start, and I’ve been ignoring it. Paranoia Disease my ass!_

In a fit of sudden fury, Fuyuhiko drew back his arm and chucked the thermometer as hard as he could down the hallway. It clattered against something loudly in the darkness. A moment later, a door opened at the far end of the hall. Hajime stuck his head out, several layers of hospital sheets still wrapped around his shoulders.

“You okay out here?”

“Fuck you. Go back to bed.”

“Because it sounds like you’re throwing things,” said Hajime, unperturbed by that.

“Well I’ll throw it _quieter_ next time. So sorry I disturbed your goddamn sleep. It was a fuckin’ _thermometer_ , not like I’m tossing chairs around out here. Don’t know how the hell you’re even hearing me throw shit, unless you’re listening at the door.”

Hajime leaned against the doorframe and gestured vaguely to his ears. “I’m the Ultimate Musician, of course I can hear you out here.”

“Oh… oh _fuck no,_ ” Fuyuhiko moaned, resisting the urge to slide down the wall and crumple into a heap on the floor so it could all be someone else’s problem. “I thought we had your shit figured out!”

He staked down the hallway and grabbed the front of Hajime’s hospital gown, forcing him to bend down slightly so Fuyuhiko could check his forehead. “Don’t be worse, don’t be worse, don’t you dare be getting worse…”

Hajime put up with the manhandling with a long-suffering expression of well honed patience. “Is it seriously so hard for you to believe that I finally remembered my talent?”

“Oh, so we’re acknowledging the amnesia thing now? I’m not sure if that’s encouraging, or if it makes the whole thing that much stupider. Fuckin’ yes, Hajime, it’s hard to believe, because this morning you were calling yourself the Ultimate Nurse!”

“That’s also my talent,” said Hajime, patiently.

“Do you even hear yourself? You can’t be Ultimate at two things at once, that’s not how this works. Shit, you’re hot.” Fuyuhiko let his hand drop, feeling utterly on his own in all this. He steered Hajime back into the room. Hajime made as if to protest, and Fuyuhiko shoved him back onto the bed and cut him off with, “No, shut up, don’t talk to me. I’m having a bad enough day and I don’t want to hear any more delusional bullshit about your alleged fuckin’ _talents._ I’m not having this argument with you; you physically cannot think rationally about it right now.”

“I think what’s getting worse is your bedside manner,” said Hajime conversationally, while lying facedown atop the mattress at the awkward angle that Fuyuhiko had toppled him.

“Yeah, well, I’m under a lot of pressure. Fuck you for abandoning me in my hour of need.”

Hajime rolled over. “If you need my help, then tell me what I can help with,” he said, at last losing some of that cool patience. “Look, I’m feeling okay, I can get out of bed, just give me something to do.”

Despite everything, Fuyuhiko found himself incredibly temped to take Hajime up on that. To tell him what Nagito had said, to ask that strangely analytical brain of his how to handle things, to count on him for help. Hajime was a reliable guy, and for some bizarre, unexplainable reason, he really did seem to want to be friends with Fuyuhiko. But he couldn’t put this on Hajime’s shoulders, because right now, Hajime just… wasn’t all there.

“Don’t you start lying to me too,” Fuyuhiko sighed. “You can barely stand up and your skin’s a fuckin’ skillet. You are not feeling okay.”

Hajime shivered and curled up into his blankets again, as if to illustrate Fuyuhiko’s point. It caused Fuyuhiko’s anger and frustration to soften a little. _Don’t take it out on him. It’s not his fault. He can’t help what he’s thinking, any more than Nagito can help lying. Just be glad it’s not something he’s likely to murder somebody over._

“Nagito’s awake, isn’t he?” said Hajime, quietly.

“What makes you say that?”

“Just seemed obvious,” said Hajime, for the second time that day. “You said ‘don’t you start lying too.’ Who else would be lying to you?”

“Okay, yes,” Fuyuhiko admitted. “He was awake earlier. He’s sleeping now. There’s the big fuckin’ news of the day.” At the look on Hajime’s face, he added, “What the hell is up with you two? You’re always asking about each other. Ibuki and Akane are sick too, you know. How about sparing a little concern for them?”

Hajime shrugged and closed his eyes. “I honestly could not tell you what’s up with me and Nagito.”

“That sounds like an understatement.”

“Hah. Yeah. He’s weird and I don’t understand him at all, but sometimes I feel like I’m the only person on the island who’s trying. Maybe I’m just worried about him because somebody has to be.”

Fuyuhiko shuffled a little guiltily, remembering the fear on Nagito’s face. Not that he was going to be murdered, but that no one would understand his cries for help. That no one would believe him or care, even if they did.

“I wonder if any of us were friends with him, back at Hope’s Peak,” Hajime continued. “He seemed to get along with everybody before Monokuma showed up. Maybe without the killing game… I dunno. I don’t have enough data on our school lives to extrapolate.” Whatever that last bit of garbled speech was supposed to mean, it trailed off wistfully into silence.

An idea struck Fuyuhiko like lightning.

He leaned over suddenly and grabbed the headboard of Hajime’s bed. “Wait, shit, I know what you can help with!”

The hospital beds were on wheels, as they’d discovered when moving Ibuki’s bed into Akane’s room, so it wasn’t at all difficult for Fuyuhiko to wrench Hajime’s bed at a 90 degree angle and make a beeline for the door. Hajime seemed startled by the sudden movement, and one arm actually abandoned his tight cocoon of blankets to reach up and grab the bars of the headboard to steady himself. “Hey, what are you-” Fuyuhiko’s aim was off, and the side of the bed crashed into the doorframe with a dull _thunk_ of metal on wood. “Do you need me to get out of bed for this?!”

“Nope, stay where you’re at,” said Fuyuhiko, reorienting the bed and wedging it through the doorway, getting it stuck. “You know how the girls are roommates now?”

Horrified realization dawned on Hajime’s face. “No. Fuyuhiko, _no._ What did I ever do to you?”

“Don’t act like the two of you haven’t been pining for each other since day one. You should be thanking me.” Fuyuhiko backed up a bit and then rammed his shoulder into the headboard. The impact sent a stinging pain through the cut on his stomach, but it forced the bed free. It rolled a few feet out into the hallway and hit the far wall.

“Don’t do that,” Hajime muttered breathlessly. “I’m too dizzy for you to be doing that. I’m just gonna stand up.”

“No you’re not,” said Fuyuhiko, spinning the bed again and pushing it down the hall, away from room four and towards room two. Hajime groaned and closed his eyes. “You wanna help out so bad? Here’s what you can be doing for me right the fuck now. Nagito’s scared and delirious and freaking out because he thinks someone’s gonna murder him while he can’t fight back. He keeps asking for you specifically, so you’re gonna stay in that room, and you’re gonna make him feel like we didn’t just _leave him alone to fuckin’ die.”_

Hajime went silent. Fuyuhiko reached the second hospital room and swung the bed around a little more carefully, judging the angle at which he should try pushing it through the door. This was going to work! Suppose Nagito was right; suppose Mikan had the Stab Everyone In Their Sleep Disease. (Or hell, suppose Mikan was just a stabby fuckin’ person and she’d been lying to them all the whole time.) She couldn’t kill anyone in front of a witness, not without losing the killing game. With Ibuki and Akane sleeping mere feet from each other in one room, and Nagito and Hajime in the other, he’d just made it really annoyingly hard for her to murder anyone. It would buy him time to figure out what to do next.

“Okay,” said Hajime, as if Fuyuhiko had left him with a choice. “Okay, I’ll share a room with him. But if I start shouting because he’s doing something weird, you’d better come running.”

“Cross my heart,” said Fuyuhiko, in the process of squeezing the bed through yet another doorframe. “When you’re in this hospital you’re under my protection, and that’s a promise.”

The nightly check-in with Kazuichi was rapidly approaching, and that meant so was the nighttime announcement. Fuyuhiko was all too aware of how quickly that protection was waning. When night hit, he’d be kicked out, and the hospital would become Mikan’s domain.

“Now promise me you’ll all be alive in the morning,” he muttered, more to himself than to Hajime.

________

The too-bright fluorescent lighting of the supermarket burned brightly against the darkness outside. Mikan hummed as she perused its shelves, running her hands over tools, knives, survival equipment. How nice of Fuyuhiko to give her a break so that she could spend some time planning! She selected a rope at random and tugged on it a few times to test its strength.

“Strangulation is so romantic, isn’t it?” she murmured, twisting her fingers through the coils of rope, stroking it like the hair of a lover. “The desperate panic in the eyes, the delicate blue of the lips as hypoxia sets in… None of that messy exsanguination like in stabbing.” 

She looped the rope around her shoulders a few times and drew it tight, feeling it embrace her. “Oh no,” she whispered, giggling. One end of the rope twisted into a noose in her hands, and she draped it around her own neck. “One of our poor, sick classmates has finally given in to Despair!”

Darkness pressed against the windows. Rope still draped around her, Mikan continued to shuffle through the shelves, a plan forming loosely in her head. It would be so much easier to think if her brain wasn’t a pool of boiling water behind her eyes, bright, fizzy bubbles of love and Despair popping against the inside of her skull in dizzy little starbursts. But she put off swallowing another handful of pills. She wouldn’t trade this feeling for the world.


	4. Strangers With Your Friends' Faces

“Put this under your tongue and keep it there until it beeps,” Mikan instructed Hajime, passing him a digital thermometer.

Nagito’s room was a mess. With two beds crammed into it, it seemed suddenly tiny and cramped. Hajime’s bed was at an angle that was infuriatingly close to being parallel with Nagito’s, with the dresser and Mikan’s folding chair wedged between them in a tiny gap that definitely wouldn’t have left any room for her legs if she actually tried to sit down in it. Mikan frowned down at the chair for a moment before perching herself on the edge of Hajime’s bed instead. She dropped the plastic grocery bag she’d been carrying at her feet and rifled through it, pulling out a large metal thermos she’d gotten from Rocketpunch Market and setting it distractedly on the dresser-turned-bedside table.

Hajime, still curled up tightly in his cocoon of sweat-damp sheets, idly turned the thermometer over in his hands while she leaned over Nagito.

“Under your tongue, please,” Mikan repeated. Nagito was looking better. His breathing was even, and some of the color had returned to his face. Mikan retrieved another thermometer from her apron pocket and gently went about checking his temperature, humming cheerfully.

It didn’t really matter whose bed was where. It would be stupid to kill someone in their own room, after all. She’d already decided on Ibuki, precisely because Ibuki would gullibly follow her out of the hospital to whatever crime scene she picked - and she had the most wonderfully convoluted plan to confuse everyone and give herself an alibi. It felt a little like standing backstage at a play, moments before stepping out in front of the judging gazes of a dark and unseen audience. So complicated, with so many props and scene changes and lines to remember and important timing cues to get right. She felt incredibly clever for coming up with it all, and full of nervous, excited energy for it to begin. To perform in front of the unseen eyes of her Beloved, watching from the darkness. Without meaning to, she found herself ghosting her fingertips affectionately across Nagito’s left arm, still humming.

“I am really sick of thermometers,” Hajime said from behind her.

“Well, you’re really sick in general, so please endure it,” Mikan said, pushing that gleeful, jittery feeling to the back of her mind. For another hour or two, her classmates still needed the Ultimate Nurse. “Um, there’s soup in the thermos on your dresser, by the way. It’s mostly just broth, so it should be easy to digest. Even if you don’t have an appetite, please try to drink some of it tonight. You haven’t eaten anything since yesterday.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Hajime reached over and pulled the thermos off the dresser, and Mikan looked over her shoulder to smile at him encouragingly. “I promise it’s better than what Fuyuhiko tried to feed you earlier! Well, um, anything would be…”

Hajime propped himself up on his elbows and unscrewed the top of the thermos, staring down dully at the warm, watery broth within. Mikan knew what he was feeling. That utter lack of appetite that made everything seem unappetizing, unappealing, a chore to swallow, even before you put it in your mouth and realized that sickness had made the world taste like cardboard. She had Despair Disease too, after all. 

“Isn’t there a rule tacked up in the lobby about no food or drink being allowed in the hospital?” he asked.

“Is there?” Mikan honestly hadn’t even read the lobby notice board. “Um, it’s probably okay. The girls have already eaten some, and Monokuma never showed up to yell at us. Hospitals usually have rules like that for visitors and staff, t-to promote a sterile environment, not for the patents. People would starve to death if they had to have a long hospital stay, otherwise!”

Hajime continued to stare into the thermos with that look of quiet resignation.

“Try to pretend it’s water,” she offered, because that miserable, constant thirst was also a feeling she was familiar with. Hajime squeezed his eyes shut and took a gulp. Mikan reached over distractedly and patted him on the arm. “See! It’s not so bad, right?”

“It’s cold,” said Hajime.

“It’s lukewarm. Your body temperature is just so hot that everything seems cold. Put that thermometer in your mouth, please.”

She retrieved the thermos from him and set it back on the dresser. Hajime hadn’t managed to swallow much of its contents, but Mikan was still pleased that he had anything in his stomach at all. Hajime slumped back down against his pillow and finally stuck the thermometer under his tongue.

“You said the girls have eaten. When was the last time Nagito ate something?” he asked, his voice lisping around the thermometer.

That hum at last died away from Mikan’s voice, replaced by a hesitant little thread of worry. “He didn’t eat when he came to breakfast sick yesterday. So, um… it’s been two days, at least. Even the times today when Nagito woke up for a bit, he was in such a stupor… it would be a choking hazard to try and force him to eat when he’s like that! The hospital has IVs, so if he isn’t able to eat soon, we can always resort to using one of those. But I’m hoping he’ll improve before it comes to that.”

Hajime nodded slightly, his head against the pillow, his eyes watching the gentle rise and fall of Nagito’s diaphragm. “Leave the thermos,” he said. “Maybe I’ll get hungry enough for the rest of it.”

 _Maybe Nagito will wake up in the middle of the night and be able to eat something, is what he really means,_ Mikan thought.

There was a little digital beep from Nagito’s thermometer, and Mikan retrieved it and squinted through the darkness at its tiny screen. “It’s gone down a little,” she murmured to herself. A soft sigh from Hajime, something that sounded like relief. Mikan glanced over at him with a small frown, biting her lip. The stress Hajime was under, worrying about his classmates as well as himself, was doing nothing to help him heal. “Um, are you sure you want to stay in Nagito’s room tonight?” she asked. “It’s not your job to worry about him, you know. You need to rest.”

“It was supposed to be my job,” said Hajime, tiredly. “This is something I can still help with. All I’ve been doing all day is lying in bed and staring at the ceiling. At least if I’m in here waiting for him to have a medical emergency, it’s something to do.”

“Th-that’s not restful at all!” Mikan said shrilly. Her impending murder plot was all but forgotten in the face of a sudden and overwhelming wave of Helpless People Must Be Taken Care Of instinct. “Is _that_ why Fuyuhiko is making you sleep in here?”

“I mean, it’s not exactly because I was dying to have a sleepover with him,” Hajime said flatly.

Mikan stood up indignantly, slapping Nagito’s thermometer down on the dresser with a little too much force and making the thermos wobble dangerously. “I’ll… I’ll go talk to him!” The nighttime announcement hadn’t gone off throughout the island yet, and Fuyuhiko hadn’t left the hospital. He was still in the lobby, doing the last minute nightly check-in with Kazuichi on their makeshift communication device. She should be able to catch him before he left. “All this… this s-shuffling the beds around has gone too far! I can’t believe he would put all this p-pressure on you! You’re _sick!!”_

“Mikan!” said Hajime, sitting up and grabbing her arm. She yelped.

“It was my idea to put everyone in rooms together, remember?” he said. “Not Fuyuhiko’s. It’s okay. I’m here because I want to be. It’s not too much pressure. I’m fine.” He let go of her arm and put a hand to his head, looking a little woozy. “Okay, so I probably shouldn’t have sat up that fast…”

Hajime’s thermometer beeped, and Mikan tsked softly and took it from him as she pushed him gently back onto the bed. “Alright, but lie down!”

In truth, she found herself glad that he’d stopped her. If she’d actually gone to confront Fuyuhiko, she probably would have just ended up stammering incoherently until her righteous indignation petered out and she gave up. _Or… no. That was a different me._

“Actually, when was the last time _you_ ate?” said Hajime.

“I ate some of that cup ramen Fuyuhiko brought earlier,” Mikan said. Technically that wasn’t a lie, though she’d only taken a single bite. But Hajime didn’t need to know that Mikan Tsumiki also had no appetite. 

“Huh,” said Hajime distantly, with that look he sometimes wore during trials, when he’d found two pieces of evidence that fit together and was trying to puzzle out what they meant.

“And stop doing that! Stop worrying about everybody but yourself!”

“I’m fine,” Hajime repeated.

The thermometer in her hands said otherwise. A full day’s regimen of fever reducers and anti-inflammatories had done nothing to control Hajime’s temperature. “Forty point two degrees celsius,” she read, and then read again, wide-eyed, to make sure she hadn’t misunderstood. A little thrill of panic shot through her. “Hajime, that’s… th-that’s not fine! That’s so much higher than it was this morning!!”

She’d been too preoccupied with Nagito, ignoring everyone else and trusting that Fuyuhiko could handle things. Only now did she realize how irresponsible that was. Mikan grabbed Hajime by the shoulders, noticing at last the pale clamminess of his skin, the fevered flush in his cheeks, his too-rapid breath and the way his sheets were absolutely soaked through with sweat. “H-hajime! I’m sorry! I’m so, so sorry! I’ve been so focused on nursing Nagito back to health that I wasn’t paying you any attention!” That fury filled her again. “Fuyuhiko was supposed to be keeping track of this!”

“He… might have forgotten a couple doses of medication,” Hajime admitted. “And I might have not reminded him.” He jumped immediately to Fuyuhiko’s defense, in Mikan’s opinion, undeservedly. “Fuyuhiko’s had a lot to deal with.”

“That’s not an excuse!” One hand pressed itself to his face in a flurried little panic, touching his cheek, his forehead, his cheek again, and finding nothing but heat, heat, heat. “A-are you feeling alright? Are you dizzy at all? Do you want some water? Oh, I knew we shouldn’t have given you those extra blankets, I knew you’d overheat!”

Defensively, Hajime clutched the sheets a little tighter around himself, looking ready to fight her for them if she tried to take them away. Mikan let go of him and fumbled through her apron pockets, flustered. “I picked up some more syringes from the pharmacy on my way back from the supermarket. I’ll give you a shot right away! J-just hang on!”

“I don’t want a shot,” said Hajime. “Hey, Mikan, calm down, I don’t need another shot. Can’t it just be a pill or something?”

“Don’t be silly,” said Mikan. She’d dumped all her various bottles and sandwich bags of medication onto the dresser, and was already prepping a syringe. “Shots are the fastest and most convenient way to get important medication into your bloodstream! Let me just see your arm-”

She didn’t even see him move. One moment Hajime was lying listlessly in bed, and the next he was sitting upright. His hand shot out and locked around her wrist - not the way he’d grabbed her before, but with a firm pressure just shy of pain.

“No more shots,” said Hajime.

Mikan was not accustomed to patients telling her no. Her first instinct was to put him in his place, in a stream of panicky little babble. “Hajime, lie down! That’s ridiculous! You were so brave about it this morning, s-so you can’t tell me you’re scared now! Of course you need a shot. Your temperature is way too high! If I don’t give you something for it, you’ll-” She squeaked as that pressure around her wrist cut her off, increasing sharply until her eyes watered and her bones seemed to grind together. The syringe tumbled out of her suddenly weak fingers and clattered against the others on the dresser.

“No more shots,” Hajime repeated, very, very coldly, his voice dangerous and dispassionate and empty. “No more needles, no more drugs, no more thermometers and sterile rooms and hospital gowns and _injecting things into my body.”_ His fingernails dug into her skin. “ _No more,_ Mikan.”

Mikan licked her lips, her mouth and throat dry. Her heart was hammering wildly against her ribcage, her pulse pounding through that band of pain beneath his hand. Hajime was staring at her with eyes as empty as his voice.

“Izuru?” she whispered.

He let go of her arm.

Not just let go; his hand sprang away from her wrist as if she’d burned him. Maybe she’d been imagining things, because suddenly Hajime’s eyes were full of emotion again - anxious and confused and guilty. “Ah! C-crap!” he stammered. “I didn’t mean to… I don’t know why I just…” A violent shiver ran through him, and he wrapped his arms around himself as if just now realizing that his blankets had fallen away. “M-maybe I’m not fine…”

Mikan’s heart was still racing as she rubbed at her aching wrist. The marks from Izuru’s fingernails stood out against her pale skin, a trail of little red crescents making a line down her radial artery. Her fingers traced them disbelievingly, as if to prove to herself they were real. _That was Izuru, wasn’t it? I’m not alone! He’s in there! I saw him!!_

Hajime weakly groped for his blankets, pulling them up around his shoulders again. He wasn’t looking at her. His voice was shaking. “I didn’t mean to freak out and snap at you. I just… I hate hospitals. I really hate hospitals, Mikan, and it wasn’t so bad during the day but it’s finally sinking in that I’m gonna have to spend the night in one, and I’m trying to keep it together but I’m… I’m starting to feel really claustrophobic, like if I stood up and tried the door it’d be locked and I wouldn’t be able to get out and… That probably sounds stupid,” he finished feebly, as she stared at him.

“It’s not stupid,” said Mikan. She leaned forward and cupped his face in her hands. That bonfire raging beneath his skin warmed her palms, but she no longer had any desire to quell it. She understood now. It was burning down whatever wall Izuru was trapped behind. A little desperately, she searched his eyes, trying to find him again. “Hajime, it’s not stupid at all! Did you maybe… have a bad experience with being in the hospital, once?” _You were so close, you were just behind his eyes! I’m right here, Izuru! If I ask the right questions, can you find your way out? Can you make him remember?_

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I thought I did. I was so sure I had to have a major surgery once, but I can’t actually remember anything about it.” He groaned and pulled his knees up to his chest, buried his head in them. “I’m so _tired_ of being the _class amnesiac_.”

Mikan stroked his hair. “But you remembered your talent.”

“The Ultimate Nurse shouldn’t be afraid of hospitals,” Hajime muttered into his knees. “When you think about it logically, maybe…” A long pause. His voice, when he spoke again, was distant and dazed, like the thought was having to fight its way up through a thick layer of fog inside his head. “Maybe Fuyuhiko… isn’t… wrong? Am I delusional?”

“No,” said Mikan, soothingly. “No, no, no. You’re not delusional.” Her voice was slipping into that sultry, coaxing croon, and her fingers stroked through his hair again, seeking out that line on his forehead where his real body bore a long silver surgical scar. If she seized a scalpel and slashed it quickly across his head, he would look so much more like himself again, short hair and hazel eyes be damned. Her hands itched to break his skin, as if his real personality could somehow come flowing out with his blood. “A disease can’t just implant knowledge into your head. A disease couldn’t magically make you know what para-acetylaminophenol was. That has to be something you knew already, right? Maybe just being in the hospital is what reminded you that you were the Ultimate Nurse.”

Hajime lifted his head slightly, and she drew her hands back quickly, clasping them together and giving him an encouraging smile. Her voice snapped back into a stuttering, high-pitched squeak. “J-just like me!”

“Yeah,” said Hajime, slowly. “Yeah, you’re right. That’s the only thing that makes sense.” Whatever brief moment of lucidity had broken the surface of his Despair Disease, her words had dragged him back under again.

 _Except he’s really_ not _delusional,_ Mikan thought. _He’s got it right, and it’s this fake reality that’s wrong. Does it really matter why he believes something that’s true?_ She’d been so angry and frustrated at his Talent Disease, that her last chance of someone else getting the Remembering Disease alongside her was wasted. But maybe remembering his talents was the first step toward remembering the rest. Just because she was in Despair didn’t mean she couldn’t be optimistic. She held up her hand and offered him a limp high-five. “Nurse buddies?”

His own hand ventured forth from the blankets again and clumsily returned it. “Yeah. Nurse buddies.” He looked a little calmer, that trapped-in-a-hospital panic having passed.

Mikan sat down next to him on the bed. “These doors don’t lock anyway, but, um… I can prop yours open with something tonight. Just so you’ll know for sure.”

The tension drained out of Hajime’s shoulders, and she suppressed a startled sound as he leaned his weight against her and his head hit her shoulder. “Thanks,” he murmured. “I know it’s irrational, but thanks.”

“Hajime, um, you know you don’t have to be the class amnesiac to forget about being in the hospital. Maybe it’s something that happened in our missing school memories?”

“You think?” said Hajime, sounding tired.

“It’s possible, isn’t it? If it was a really bad experience, um, m-maybe your emotions about it stuck around, even after World Ender took our memories.” Her smile brightened, unable to keep the eagerness off her face. “If that’s true, you might have the best chance out of any of us at remembering our school lives! If you try really hard, maybe you can remember something!” _Come on, Izuru! Wake up! Whatever they did to us, fight it!_

Hajime was silent for a long time. “I can’t,” he said finally, shoulders sagging against her as he drew the blankets around himself. Forlorn and emotional, a stranger with Izuru’s face. “It’s all just static in my head.”

Mikan sagged as well, feeling disappointed. “That’s alright,” she said. “None of us can remember.”

________

There was a song Ibuki used to blare out over the radio, back when Kazuichi had first wrestled control of the airwaves away from polite society’s selfish grasp. Mikan had asked once how the science behind those hidden harmonies worked, how they wormed their way memetically into the human hindbrain and turned people into wild, screaming animals who wanted the burn the world. Ibuki had given her a blank look and answered, “Uh, it’s death metal. You scream HEY GUYS WANNA BURN THE WORLD and everyone screams back HELL YEAH and then you do a guitar solo.”

She was humming it again as she left the room, the metal folding chair she’d extracted with difficulty from between Nagito and Hajime’s beds under her arm. When she leaned it against the doorframe and let the door swing shut against it, it left a gap of a few inches - just a sliver of view of the room inside. Through it, she could see Hajime curled up in bed, facing away from her, his eyes focused on the one spot of brightness in a dark room, where moonlight from the window spilled silver through Nagito’s hair.

A small gap in the door, Mikan decided with sympathy, would not disrupt her plans.

She wandered away still humming, wishing she could remember the lyrics Ibuki had so lovingly crafted. Some metaphor about living like a firecracker - loud and bright and destructive and quick, dying young and with a bang. It wasn’t a happy song, but it screamed defiance in the face of an uncaring world. The Ibuki who had written those words wouldn’t have wanted to live like this, brainwashed and hopeful and stupid.

None of them would have wanted to live like this. The conversation with Hajime had only cemented it in her mind. The poor thing was so distressed by what they’d taken from him. Perhaps it was some Despair-twisted remnant of her Helpless People Must Be Taken Care Of impulse, but Mikan found herself no longer motivated only to impress her Beloved. She needed to help her suffering friends, too. If she got away with tonight’s murder, maybe with the trial she could kill them all.

The person with Ibuki’s face was lying on her back in bed, eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling. Her gaze flickered over to Mikan as she opened the door and peeked inside, and she grinned, that line of drool shining on her chin. “Hello!” she called out. “Am I allowed to get out of bed yet?”

Mikan hurriedly shushed her. “You have to be quiet right now, Ibuki!” she said. “Akane is sleeping!”

“Understood,” Ibuki mouthed back in a stage whisper.

Akane, of course, would not have woken up. She was snoring thunderously, twisted up in her sheets with her own thermos of broth cuddled empty in the crook of her arm. She’d chugged the whole thing immediately, and with Despair Disease dulling her sense of taste, she hadn’t even noticed the bitter, medicinal flavor of the sleeping pills Mikan had mixed in. By now, she’d killed enough time checking on Nagito and Hajime for them to kick in.

A small, self-satisfied smile drifted across Mikan’s face. No, it really didn’t matter whose bed was where. Akane would not be waking up for anything tonight.

“I know you’re bored,” she whispered sweetly to Ibuki from the doorway. “If you’re quiet and you stay in bed, I’ll let you take a walk with me later tonight. We can go to the music venue. You like the music venue. Won’t that be fun?”

Ibuki smiled vapidly at her. “I can’t,” she said. “If I go outside I’ll die.”

That saccharine smile slid from Mikan’s face. Whether or not Fuyuhiko actually suspected anything, he really did seem determined to make this murder as annoying as possible.

________

The lobby was the only room with its lights still on, a lone box of brightness in the dark hospital. Fuyuhiko leaned with his elbows on the reception desk, his fingers woven together and his chin resting on his hands, staring at the tiny, glowing screen of their makeshift communication device. From the music venue, Kazuichi rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly and cast a worried look around at the world in general.

“Man, you’re _sure?”_

“Fuck no, I’m not sure. If I was _sure_ I would have _done_ something about it. I’ve got a hunch and the testimony of a liar, I can’t do shit with that.”

“I mean, if you really think she’s gonna kill somebody, can’t you just…” Kazuichi mimed a clumsy karate chopping motion. “You’re the Ultimate Yakuza, right? You could take her in a fight. Seems like it’d be really easy to stop her, y’know?”

Fuyuhiko unbraided his hands and held up an index finger. “One, I’ve got ten stitches holding my stomach together and it hurts like hell to do literally anything, so no, I probably couldn’t take her in a fight right now. Two, unless you’re keen on parking yourself in the medical textbook section of the library and getting real qualified real fast, we still need her to take care of everybody with the Despair Disease. And three, most of us don’t tie up our classmates, lock them in a room somewhere, and starve them for days on end because of what we think they _might_ do. Nagito’s doing great, by the way. Mikan says the whole being-on-his-deathbed thing is probably unrelated to that.”

Kazuichi had the decency to look mildly ashamed, even as he gritted his teeth and jabbed a finger at the camera. “H-hey, that wasn’t all me. You can’t put that whole thing on me. I got caught up in, like, mob mentality!” 

“I’m not judging you for it. Just saying we ain’t gonna do it that way this time.”

Kazuichi worked his hands through his neon hair and pulled his beanie down over his eyes, looking overwhelmed. “Well why not? If you’re not sure anything’s wrong and you’re not gonna do anything about it, then why even say anything?!”

“Because I’m done being the guy who screws us all over because I didn’t fuckin’ communicate!” Fuyuhiko said sharply, his frustration spilling over, slamming a fist against the counter and making the camera shake. “Are you with me on this, or not?”

“Fuyuhiko, man, I would definitely rather be with you than against you,” Kazuichi said defensively. “I can’t even express how much I don’t want you as my enemy.”

Fuyuhiko took a deep breath and reined in his temper. Screaming at Kazuichi would not help. “Nobody’s the enemy. We’re not splitting into fuckin’ factions.”

“Okay, but one faction is _Mikan_ , though? There’s no way. Mikan wouldn’t hurt a fly. I think if Mikan got into a fight with a fly, the fly would probably beat her up and then call her, like, insulting nicknames until she cried.”

Fuyuhiko made a quick silencing gesture toward the camera as the door to the hallway swung open. “ _Shit!_ Shut up a second.”

Standing in the doorway with that now empty plastic bag from the supermarket still clutched in her hands, Mikan shifted her weight nervously, seeming to sense his mood. “Um, I heard voices. You’re still here?” she asked, as quietly as that shrill voice of hers could get because some of their sick friends were probably asleep by now. “It’s almost ten! You’ll get in t-trouble if you’re still in the hospital after the announcement goes off!”

_Why, are you eager to get rid of me?_

“I’ve got my eye on the clock; we’ve got another minute or two,” said Fuyuhiko. Not that it mattered. Fuyuhiko was pretty sure he’d caught the clocks on this island behaving strangely out of the corner of his eye more than once before; freezing for minutes at a time or suddenly jumping ahead according to what Monokuma thought was narratively dramatic.

“Heya!!” said Kazuichi from the video screen, his voice entirely too forced and cheerful. Fuyuhiko had to keep himself from wincing. Whoever won this death game, it wouldn’t be Kazuichi. Kazuichi couldn’t lie for shit. “Is that Mikan? Hey Mikan!! How’s everybody?”

Mikan wandered over in front of the camera and gave him a little wave. “Um, most of them have had something to eat, and I’ve got them all settled down for the night. Wasn’t Fuyuhiko just telling you how everyone was?”

“Uh,” said Kazuichi. “Uh, no, we were talking about… other stuff.”

Fuyuhiko was beginning to see the appeal in that coping mechanism of Hajime’s, where you sat down and astral projected out of your body and let the world continue on without you. Kazuichi grinned manically and changed the subject.

“Hey, Fuyuhiko says we’re gonna have to disinfect the supermarket again?”

“Ah, um, sorry!” Mikan stammered. “I should have cleared it with everyone before going to get food!”

Kazuichi made a careless little _eeeh_ gesture. “It’s whatever, y’know? We’re all cooped up in the motel looking for ways to be useful anyway. Might as well go clean something.” His grin skewed a little wicked. “Since it’s Gundham’s turn, and all.”

“Sorry,” Mikan said again, more just a vocal tic than an apology. “Um, well, I’ll let you two finish up-”

“We’re finished,” said Fuyuhiko, and despite Kazuichi’s protests on the other end of the line, his hand darted forward and pressed the glowing blue button that shut the device off. The screen went dark.

Fuyuhiko took a moment to school his face into something neutral, watching Mikan’s reflection hovering over his shoulder in the dark screen. He noted the dark circles under her eyes, the way her uneven hackjob of a haircut was getting more tangled and unkempt than usual, the steadily growing collection of marks and stains on the apron she hadn’t changed in two days. She looked twice as frazzled and tired as he felt. At least he’d had a chance to sleep last night. Mikan had only managed to grab an hour or two at a time, when he’d forced her to take a break.

 _Alright,_ thought Fuyuhiko. _If I make a big scene about this and it turns out I’m wrong, I’m basically just bullying a stressed-out, exhausted classmate who’s already pushing herself to her limits for everyone’s sake. I’m supposed to be better than that now. But if I’m right, and I don’t do anything, somebody dies. How the fuck do I handle that?_

At his continued silence, Mikan’s hands anxiously kneaded that balled-up plastic bag, making it crinkle softly. “Is… something wrong?”

“Maybe,” said Fuyuhiko.

He turned around to face her, and took a subtle step to place himself between her and the door to the rest of the hospital. Mikan was staring at him with those wide, watery eyes. Fuyuhiko took another deep breath.

“Mikan… are you okay?”

Mikan blinked, as if it hadn’t been the question she’d expected.

“I know I keep asking that, but humor me,” Fuyuhiko said. “You’re tired, right? I know we’re all tired, but you’ve gotta be _really damn fuckin’ tired.”_

“I’m okay,” Mikan said sheepishly, looking at her feet.

“Don’t just say that because you think you have to be. If you can’t handle another night of this, just _say so_. We’ll figure something out.” He tried to look helpful and empathetic, and was all too aware of how bad at that he was. “Offer’s still open, I can switch with you tonight. I’ll cover things here and you can get one goddamn night of actual sleep in an actual bed.”

“Oh,” said Mikan. “That’s…” She fidgeted, twisting her fingers together. “That’s v-very nice of you to offer. But. Um.” She screwed her face up and her words came out in a rush. “I think, considering past performance, if I left you in charge for the night, s-someone would definitely be dead in the morning!!”

 _That’s my line,_ thought Fuyuhiko.

Still, looking back on the dirt he’d tracked in across the sterile hospital tile, the cold, congealed cup ramen he’d tried to feed everyone, the doses of medicine he’d missed giving Hajime, all his frantic running around as he kept losing track of the wandering Ibuki, the million little mistakes he’d been making all day… he was no Ultimate Nurse.

Mikan seemed to have taken his split second of silence for anger. She’d winced and backed away from him, raising her arms a little to shield her face as if expecting to be hit. “That’s… fair,” he said, guiltily, and she lowered them slightly.

“You’re not mad?”

“Contrary to popular belief, I’m not always fuckin’ enraged at everything all the time,” sighed Fuyuhiko. “I got other emotions.” That got a little smile out of her, which he thought was probably a good sign.

“Um, well, I promise I’m okay,” said Mikan. “Everyone’s very stable right now, even Nagito, so I should be able to get some sleep in the on call room tonight.” At his skeptical look, she added quickly, “I appreciate that you’re worried about me! But this kind of thing is what I’m good at, Fuyuhiko! So it doesn’t bother me at all to work so hard!”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m…” Mikan clasped her hands together again, the plastic bag crinkling between them. “Maybe it sounds bad, but I’m happy. N-not that everyone’s sick!! But that a situation happened where I could be useful to everyone. Without, um, someone dying.” That dismal, exhausted look returned to her face. “No matter how little sleep I get, it’s still ten times as tiring to do an… a-an autopsy. These are people I can still help.”

She didn’t sound like someone who was plotting a murder. There was something genuine in her voice when she talked about helping everyone, a determined light in her eyes. After a moment, Fuyuhiko stepped aside and sagged against the reception desk, leaving her a clear path to the hallway door. As she walked past him, he plucked that wadded-up empty bag out of her hands and tossed it at the wastebasket hidden under the reception counter. It missed. No depth perception.

“Is there anything else you wanna talk about?” he asked.

Mikan looked over her shoulder at him. “Um?”

“Anything bothering you, anybody who’s giving you a hard time lately… just, anything. Dealing with that kinda shit is what I’M good at.”

_Come on, Mikan, last chance, here’s your out. If I’m right, if you’re really planning to kill someone, it ain’t for no reason. I’ve been there, I know what it feels like. You take all that panic and that stress and that cornered desperation and you bottle it up like that’s gonna stop it. All that does is focus it, makes it drown out the rest of the world until it seems like you’ve got no other options, you gotta aim it at something. But until somebody’s actually dead, it’s not too late to stop. Whatever’s got you desperate, whatever shit’s messing your head up, if it’s stress or sickness or whatever, just… tell me. I promise I’ll understand._

Mikan stood in silent thought for a moment. She’d reached the hallway door, and her palm was pressed against it, about to swing it open. She could leave whenever she wanted, Fuyuhiko told himself. She wasn’t cornered. He hadn’t bullied her into talking.

“Um… promise you won’t get mad,” she said faintly.

“I swear,” said Fuyuhiko. “Shoot.”

Not facing him, Mikan hunched her shoulders as if she was trying to shrink into them and disappear. “Well, I wish… I wish you’d stop doing that.”

“Stop doing what? Asking if you’re okay?”

“Stop pretending to be nice.”

Her words were quiet and hesitant, but they pierced him like a lance, made his whole body tense as if he’d been struck. The lobby lights were too bright, too stark, the shadows too black. Fuyuhiko felt strangely naked beneath them.

“I’m not pretending,” he said, his throat suddenly dry.

“Of course you’re pretending. You’re acting like you want to be everyone’s friend, but that’s not who you really are. You’re mean and angry and you don’t want anything to do with us.” Something dark and silky and cruel had crept into her voice. It seemed to wrap around his brain, catch on the frayed edges of his trauma, blot out his ability to think in inky black smears. “You’re just trying to make us forget about what you did to Mahiru and Peko, right? Because you killed them both and got away with it, and now you don’t have a bodyguard, and being a murderer makes you a target. So you want us all to think you’re _nice_.”

The lobby was silent. Just the muted buzzing of those too-bright overhead lights, and the distant roar of the ocean outside. There was a roaring in Fuyuhiko’s ears as well, a rushing of blood from a heart beating far too quickly. His throat was going tight again, a blossoming heat starting at that slash in his gut and welling upward rapidly to pool behind his eyes - his eye, the other one burned with phantom pain - shit, not now, people are dying, don’t do this now-

A chime rang out across Jabberwock Island.

The lobby monitor fuzzed and crackled with static before resolving itself into an image of Monokuma’s grinning face. Mikan shot it a frantic look. “Fuyuhiko! It’s ten! You can’t still be in the hospital, y-you’re breaking a rule!!” She was all stuttering and teary eyes again as she rushed forward and tried to usher him out by the shoulders. “Ah! I’m sorry!! I’m so sorry! That’s n-not how I meant to word it! I was nervous and it ended up coming out all weird!! I just meant that your mental health is important too, and you sh-sh-shouldn’t pressure yourself to be someone you’re not!! Please don’t be mad at meeeee!”

He found himself being led dumbly, powerless to stop her. The world was a whirlwind, rushing meaninglessly around him as Mikan’s and Monokuma’s voices filled the lobby, running together. _“Hope’s Peak Academy School Trip Executive Committee has an announcement to make!”_ “Forgive me! Please forgive me for saying something weird!!” _“It is now ten p.m. Please return to your rooms and relax!”_ “I’m sorry, but you have to go!!!” Mikan practically shoved him out of the hospital doors, and he turned around just in time to see her nervous little goodbye wave as they swung shut behind him.

“Don’t worry,” Mikan called out over the end of the nighttime announcement. “Everything’s going to be fine!”

Then those bright fluorescents flickered out, and the lobby was left dark and empty.

 _“Sweet dreams everyone,”_ Monokuma continued, muffled and distant, a faraway chorus echoing out from a dozen unseen monitors scattered across the dark island. _“Good niiiiiiiight~”_

Fuyuhiko stood staring at the hospital doors. They weren’t locked, but they might as well have been a blank wall, for all the power he had to walk through them now.

“Shit,” he muttered shakily, pressing a hand to his face, wrapping his other arm protectively around that line of pain across his stomach. His legs gave out, and he sat down hard on the gravel of the hospital parking lot. “Shit.”


End file.
